The news:
- Reports indicate that the Republic of the Congo has commenced the development of a three-storey data centre in the Bacongo district of Brazzaville to house the national data centre designed to store and process the digital data of the Central African nation.
- The construction will see a 600-kilometre fibre optic cable on the major interconnecting routes with Cameroon (341 km) and the Central African Republic (281 km) via the Congo River.
- The project has funding of $72.8 million (€66.97 million), with $57 million (€52.47 million) from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and $15.8 million (€14.50 million) from the country’s government.
A total of $14.6 million (€13.8 million) has been set aside for the construction and operation of the data centre.
The building will feature server rooms, monitoring and supervision rooms, and conference rooms. Additionally, the three-storey structure will be home to the energy and air-conditioning equipment the new centre needs to function correctly, which is expected to d be delivered by December 2024.
According to Michael Ngakala, coordinator of the Central Africa Fibre-Optic Backbone Project, the Republic of the Congo will soon become the only Central African country with a data centre.
“Ultimately, the videoconferences we run here will no longer go through a server in Europe, America or elsewhere before coming back to us. Everything will happen right here”, he assured.
The coordinator noted that the data produced in the country is stored abroad, which is why Congolese domain names typically end in “.fr” or “.com”, instead of Congo’s domain name that ends with “.cg.”
Moving forward, this is expected to change as the country can host all public data in the new data centre. Telecom operators, banks, insurance companies, and other private firms can also host and back up their primary storage sites at the national centre.
This development has been welcomed as a significant contribution to the advancement of Congo's digital economy, as well as an opportunity for the country to strengthen its digital security by gaining control over its data.
