The company, on a $500 million-plus, multi-year investment programme that will strengthen key elements of the continent’s digital infrastructure, believes that with the FX unification, investors can now estimate the rate at which they can acquire equipment, among other obligations, while planning to invest in Nigeria.
Already, the connectivity and Data Centre infrastructure arm of West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) is feeling the impact of the new forex policy in their business operations in the country.
Speaking during a breakfast meeting in Lagos, the Chief Executive Officer OADC (Africa), Dr. Ayotunde Coker, said they were actively building data centres across Africa.
“We have taken the burden of organisations in building their own data centres, and we will continue to expand our data centres as the demand increases. Our value proposition is to ensure that businesses that are connected to our data centres, maintain zero downtime in all their operations,” Coker said.
“The issue of barriers and limitations to connectivity and data centre infrastructure will be over as WIOCC and OADC will continue to provide unlimited connectivity and open access from our data centre facilities.”
Slawomir Cieslinski, the Business Development Manager for WIOCC (Nigeria), speaking about business operations in the country said the new forex policy has impacted their business operation positively.
“The release of the foreign exchange impacted our businesses a lot. We had some problems in the past when we tried to buy some equipment from our Nigerian vendors and they had to cut in the naira for equipment. We have to evaluate the offers, so we were getting offers from abroad and when you get them from abroad and doing the evaluation, you have to compare apple to apple and you have to convert it to dollars. When you convert to dollars, you have to use the CBN rate, which is the official rate.
“This was disqualifying Nigerian vendors because after converting naira to dollar, they are two times more expensive than the competitors from abroad,” he said
He disclosed that the forex policy has had a positive impact on their business while also impacting them in other areas.
Already, OADC has commenced the phase three of its world-class data centre located in Lekki Nigeria while and replicating such investments in other African countries.
This OADC Lagos LOS1 is a purpose-built, high specification data centre, situated on a four-hectares site in Lekki, making it the largest data centre campus in West Africa,
The carrier-neutral facility will deliver up to 20 megawatts of site load across more than 7,200m (square) of white space sufficient for 3,200 racks.
Meanwhile, Dr. Coker told business partners and clients at the meeting that outsourcing any mission-critical element of their business requires careful consideration.
He outlines issues around redundancy/uptime, OPEX vs CAPEX, professional expertise, scalability, and minimising environmental impact as chief reasons businesses should embrace OADC services.
Continuing he said, “OADC has a vision for Africa. We are constructing a pan-African network of carrier-neutral data centres to support organisations extending business across Africa and we will deliver all the scalability and flexibility you require, together with unparalleled levels of interaction, expert assistance and partnership in tailoring solutions that match your current and future needs.”
