Data centres are taking root in Africa

IN THE NAMANVE industrial park on the edge of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, trucks rumble through the dust, laden with steel. Sacks of coffee pile up in warehouses. And at Raxio data centre, which opened this year, a local corner of the internet is encased in rows of gleaming racks. Reach out, and you can touch the cloud.Most of Africa’s data are currently stored elsewhere, zipping down undersea cables that often make landfall in the French city of Marseille. From the continent’s southern tip it can take 180 milliseconds for a message to reach Europe and back—long enough to frustrate people trying to trade shares or play games. But a flurry of investment in data centres is now bringing the internet closer to users, laying the ground for a digital revolution.