Relocate assets locally, Sanwo-Olu tells foreign IT coys

Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has urged companies with foreign IT workloads and services to relocate their assets locally.

According to him, this will strengthen the state’s position in the global IT market.

Sanwo-Olu gave the advice at the ground breaking ceremony of the Rack Centre 12MW IT power capacity data centre facility held on Thursday at Oregun, Lagos State.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that rack centre, founded in 2012, focuses solely on providing colocation services and unrestricted interconnect between carriers and customers.

It gives customers a technically superior, physically more secure and lower cost environment for their information systems.

It is also the only carrier and cloud neutral tier III constructed facility certified data centre in Africa.

The governor, represented by his deputy, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, said the event was significant within the information technology ecosystem because of the increasing IT infrastructure utilisation caused by proliferation of technologies like Artificial Intelligence.

He further added that machine learning, blockchain, software defined networks, smart cities all demonstrated the fact that the people were at an inflection point in the way businesses are conducted.

Sanwo-Olu noted that technology has revolutionised and continued to change industries and business models.

“In 2021, investments in data centre infrastructure domiciled in Lagos grew by over a billion dollars.

“This in itself is testament to the enabling environment and captivating market Lagos provides.

“We are certain that demand for future rack centre services are already available within this market from both a private and public sector perspective,” he said.

Sanwo-Olu said that companies like rack centre are at the heart of making the future possible and the dreams plausible.

“On our part as a government, we have embarked on a series of initiatives and programmes that will deliver one of the most digitised cities in Africa.

“From our 3000km metropolitan fibre optic project to our electronic geographic information system, our smart city initiatives and implementations, Lagos is poised to be a significant IT hub for the region,” the governor said.

He expressed confidence that rack centre carrier neutral status and their local interconnect ambitions would further strengthen Lagos position as a digital economic centre.

Earlier, Mr Jasper Lankhorst, the Group Chief Executive Officer of Rack Centre, said the objective was to expand its services by building a 12 megawatt IT data centre from a 1.5 megawatt.

He said: “We are laying a foundation to support others not only in Lagos but in Nigeria and West Africa.”

Similarly, Mr Ezekiel Egboye, the Chief Operating Officer of the company, said the data centre had grown to be the largest carrier and cloud neutral digital infrastructure hub.

“With this expansion, we intend to grow our ecosystem,” he said.