A $41million financing package announced on Thursday from IFC, Proparco and RMB for digital infrastructure provider WIOCC Group will fund WIOCC’s expansion strategy in Nigeria, South Africa and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), enhancing the continent’s digital infrastructure and connectivity, and supporting economic growth.
The financing includes loans of $10m and ZAR 200m from IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and $20m from Proparco, a development finance institution and subsidiary of the Agence Française de Développement Group, a statement by WIOCC said yesterday.
WIOCC expects to sign an additional $10m loan for its expansion in Nigeria with RMB in the next few weeks, the statement added.
With the funding, WIOCC Group will expand its core and edge data centres in the DRC, Nigeria, and South Africa to meet growing demand for colocation and other data centre services. It will also grow its fibre networks, helping bridge the digital divide, and fostering economic growth across Africa.
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The financing is structured as a sustainability-linked debt, with pricing linked to WIOCC’s commitment to improve the energy efficiency of its data centres and obtain EDGE green building certification for them. EDGE, an innovation of IFC, makes it easy to design and certify resource-efficient and zero carbon buildings.
“We are excited to conclude this next stage of our capital raise, which will enable significant expansion, adding further capacity to our open-access data centre operation and extending open-access hyperscale national, international, and metro connectivity across our key markets in Nigeria, southern Africa, the DRC and Greater East and Central Africa,” said Chris Wood, CEO of WIOCC Group. “Our policy of continual investment in infrastructure to create Africa’s first, truly open-access interconnected digital ecosystem means ongoing investment for growth, ensuring readiness to meet the future demands of our clients’ customers throughout Africa.”
“The Agence Française de Développement Group have been supporting WIOCC since its inception back in 2007,” said Ariane Ducreux, Head of Energy, Digital and Infrastructure at PROPARCO. “We are very proud to pursue this long-term partnership by supporting the expansion of the Open Access Data Centres’ activities in Nigeria, South Africa, DRC and beyond.
“Our long-standing partnership with WIOCC of more than 15 years demonstrates IFC’s commitment to increasing affordable and reliable digital connectivity in Africa through shared infrastructure. This new debt facility will help WIOCC fulfil its ambition to establish an integrated, open-access, core-to-edge cloud ecosystem throughout the African continent, which is critical to bridge the digital divide,” said Bertrand de la Borde,
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