The National Development Plan sought to leverage the country’s geographic position by transforming the country’s capital, Lomé, into a regional trading centre and transport hub; it implemented business reforms and completed large infrastructure projects to attract investment; and, it established the Business Climate Unit to coordinate economic reforms and play a key role in improving the business climate for the private sector – improving the ease of doing business in Togo as a result.
Consequently, the country has prospered – with its economic and digital transformation following a trajectory that has resulted in Togo rising more than 50 places in the World Bank’s Doing Business report in the last two years. Significantly, the government has restored Togo’s reputation as a regional banking centre, resulting in an influx of regional and sub-regional banks now operating in the country.
This rapid economic and developmental upturn is not only attracting direct foreign investment; it is also establishing Togo as a West African hub. But, with interest from financial sector organisations comes a demand for high-speed access to global data – and the only reliable way to reduce latency for these highly time-sensitive organisations is their proximity to world-class data centres.
It was this foresight that prompted the Togolese government to announce the commencement of its data centre project, called Carrier Hotel, in December 2018, and, with its completion, the project provides Togo with the foundation to enter the next phase of its economic and digital development.
World-class partnerships
The Government of Togo contracted Africa Data Centres, Africa’s largest network of a carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre facilities, to manage its carrier hotel, recognising its expertise in the pan-African market.
“Africa Data Centres has a vast network of interconnected data centres across the continent,” says Stephane Duproz, CEO at Africa Data Centres. “Together with our expertise, our commitment to efficiency, reliability, sustainability and security are factors that are essential to give confidence to businesses wishing to secure Togo as their digital hub. Additionally, these businesses directly benefit from Africa Data Centres’ over 25 points of presence across the continent – offering direct, dedicated, secure and redundant connection to multiple hyper-cloud providers.”
Togo’s digital transformation
The Togolese Government has announced that in terms of reliability, security, quality, and technology, this data centre is one of the most prominent in West Africa.
As such, the region – both the public sector and civil society – is set to benefit directly from:
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- Enhanced safety: storing data in distributed data centres is safer
- Enhance compliance: Distributed data centres make compliance with new ‘digital’ regulations easier
- Enhance speed: Data transmission speed is higher in distributed data centres
- Reduced risk: Distributed data centres lower geopolitical risks
- Reduced costs: Lower transactional costs
- Data domiciliation: Keeping Togolese data on Togolese soil allows for regulatory compliance, and strongly bolsters national security of critical data
- Employment: Directly, the Togolese people will benefit from employment within the facility, but far more importantly is indirectly through the vast ecosystem of opportunity that locally based data centres create
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The Africa Data Centres’ managed Togo facility provides the infrastructure and security of a dedicated data centre, without any individual organisation having to shoulder the costs. By housing servers in a colocation facility, organisations enjoy the benefits of having their servers in the cloud while still maintaining physical control of their systems.
Through both economies of scale and access to world-leading best practice, colocation mitigates costs and boosts innumerable benefits by housing servers in a facility that provides the infrastructure and physical security to keep deployments safe, operational, and connected.
The government’s focus on Togo’s digital transformation, through its Togo Digital 2025 project, has committed to be “resolutely engaged in a process of transformation of its economy, [and] has decided to make digital technology the cornerstone of this transformation”.
As Togo’s Carrier Hotel opens its doors, the next phase of the country’s economic and digital development has taken a powerful stride forward.
