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BOFINET’s data centre to enhance ICT infrastructure

Botswana’s wholesale provider of national and international telecommunications infrastructure, Botswana Fibre Networks is building a Tier III+ standard, vendor-neutral Data Centre in Gaborone which will be certified by the Uptime Institute, a global advisory organisation focused on improving the performance, efficiency, and reliability of business critical infrastructure in the ICT industry. 

This Data Centre will enhance Botswana’s ICT infrastructure and bring the Internet, public and private cloud and the global digital economy closer to Botswana. This state-of-the-art facility will host at least 400 racks in 1000 square metres of white space. The Data Centre will be strategically located at the Science and Technology Park and scheduled to take eight (8) months of construction. Upon completion the Data Centre will be the biggest in Botswana. 

BOFINET Board Chairperson, Pelani Siwawa-Ndai said they have has moved on and is now constructing a state-of-the-art Data Centre.

“The Data Centre will be operated as a tier 3+ Uptime Institute certified vendor neutral facility at which all carriers, telecommunications companies (telcos) and service providers will be welcome, served evenhandedly and with utmost professionalism. Complemented by the robust and resilient fibre network infrastructure, which extends to almost every border point, this purpose-built Data Centre will increase security of business applications that will be located here due to its redundant power and intelligent cooling systems. With most services now being delivered on cloud, this Facility will be a host to some of the frequently used services in our country. Furthermore, the fact that Botswana is geographically centred in the SADC region presents us with an opportunity to be seen and used as the preferred country to facilitate low latency connectivity for countries such as Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and the world at large,” said Siwawa-Ndai.

Meanwhile the minister of transport and communication, Thulaganyo Segokgo said The Ministry of Transport and Communications’ mission through BoFiNet, has always been to provide National and International telecommunications infrastructure at wholesale level which will drive connectivity and economic growth. 

“The data centre infrastructure forms a key part of country’s competitiveness rankings, and our readiness as an economy to offer such a high quality facility places Botswana in a good position to improve her rankings world-wide. This is an important development for businesses in the public and private sector. It will become the strategic heart of Botswana’s networks that will drive Botswana’s Digital Transformation and Smart Bots initiatives, to attract and host major regional and international ICT players such as Microsoft, Google and others”, said Segokgo.

The facility is anticipated bring the strategic benefits to enterprises that are embracing the post-2020 ‘new normal’ of work and the digital transformation that enables enhanced network performance, secure, robust colocation, Business agility, greater network and systems resilience, world-class colocation facilities and Cloud services 

The project is anticipated to accelerate the digital transformation initiative driving the digital economy. It will be a vehicle that businesses can leverage to draw digitally closer to content, staff, customers and the cloud. BoFiNet see it as an opportunity to bring home global ICT players such Google, Microsoft, Facebook just and many others. 

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