{"id":35663,"date":"2024-06-21T11:07:51","date_gmt":"2024-06-21T11:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=35663"},"modified":"2024-06-21T11:07:51","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T11:07:51","slug":"wiocc-raises-41-million-to-expand-infrastructure-in-3-african-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2024\/06\/21\/wiocc-raises-41-million-to-expand-infrastructure-in-3-african-country\/","title":{"rendered":"WIOCC Raises $41 Million to Expand Infrastructure in 3 African Country"},"content":{"rendered":"

The West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) has secured $41 million in debt funding to expand data centre infrastructure in Nigeria, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The funding led by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, also saw participation from Proparco, a development finance institution and subsidiary of the Agence Fran\u00e7aise de D\u00e9veloppement Group.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The funding comprises loans of $10 million, ZAR 200 million ($11 million) from the IFC and $20 million from Proparco.<\/span><\/p>\n

From a joint statement by the financiers, WIOCC is also expected to sign an additional $10 million loan with RMB in the next few weeks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With the funding, WIOCC which owns one of the largest data centers in Nigeria, Open Access Data Centres, said it would expand its core and edge data centers in its three operating countries to meet the growing demand for colocation and other data centre services.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It will also grow its fibre networks, helping bridge the digital divide, and fostering economic growth across Africa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the statement, the financing is structured as a sustainability-linked debt, with pricing linked to WIOCC\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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 hyper scale national, international, and metro connectivity across our key markets in Nigeria, southern Africa, the DRC and Greater East and Central Africa<\/span><\/em>\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOur policy of continual investment in infrastructure to create Africa\u2019s first, truly open-access interconnected digital ecosystem means ongoing investment for growth, ensuring readiness to meet the future demands of our client\u2019s customers throughout Africa\u201d\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0CEO of WIOCC Group, Chris Wood, stated<\/span><\/p>\n

Head of Energy, Digital and Infrastructure at PROPARCO, Ariane Ducreux, said the Agence Fran\u00e7aise de D\u00e9veloppement Group has been supporting WIOCC since its inception back in 2007.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

IFC Global Industry Director of Infrastructure, Bertrand de la Borde, also said that the Corporation\u2019s long-standing partnership with WIOCC of more than 15 years demonstrates its commitment to increasing affordable and reliable digital connectivity in Africa through shared infrastructure.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to him, this new debt facility would help WIOCC fulfil its ambition to establish an integrated, open-access, core-to-edge cloud ecosystem throughout the African continent, which is critical to bridging the digital divide.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) has secured $41 million in debt funding to expand data centre infrastructure in Nigeria, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).\u00a0 The funding led by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, also saw participation from Proparco, a development finance institution and subsidiary of the Agence Fran\u00e7aise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":35665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,249],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35674,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35663\/revisions\/35674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}