 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast where we're covering the latest stories, trends and innovations from leaders in global connectivity, real estate and the networks within. I'm Barb Mitchell joining you today live from Capacity Europe here at the O2 in London at the Intercontinental. And joining me is Niraj Shah, Director of Business Development for IX Africa. Thanks Bob. Thanks for joining us. Yeah we were having such a nice chat. We had to cut off our chat so we could come join the rest of the audience here. But tell us, you know, let's carry on our conversation. We were talking about IX Africa. We were talking about the growth in general of the industry in Africa. But let's start with IX Africa. And if you wouldn't mind telling our audience just a little bit about your company. Sure. You know IX Africa is a carry neutral data center. It's the first one in Eastern Central Africa on a high level scale. Yeah. And basically it's one of my panel discussions this time around as well. We're talking about the whole transition of digital in Africa. How Africa is digitally just being enhanced and a lot of transition happening. How do we build it? So what we've done is we've built up a hyperscale data center to make sure that internet connectivity is available for everybody. So data center would generally be the heart of it, the core of it. And then the connectivity goes around with, you know, with all this, what I call the spinal cord. So, you know, things work well. So, yes, we built one of the biggest ones. We've actually gone live since we last talked. We're live with one megawatt right now and we'll ramp up to four and a half megawatts in Nairobi, Kenya. And it's just a fantastic data center. It's wonderful. Yeah. And so you started to talk about it. So you have this panel that's coming up today during the show. And I mean, it's so important. I feel like every time I'm here at Capacity Europe, especially and other shows, people are talking about the huge growth that's happening in Africa. And I know you're covering that on your panel. Just the transition to digital in Africa. So just can you give a little teaser? I know a lot of people may attend and want to hear more. No, absolutely. I think Africa is, you know, it's the next frontier, as we know. You know, a lot of lots happening in Africa. It's got a very young population. And what this is all about now is where's the new market, right? And so that's what we're talking about. The affinity to adopt to cloud. And so we look at the hype is now looking at coming into Africa, setting up huge data centers for themselves or locate with us. And so the idea is to now make sure that Africa is fully connected. And that whole transition on cloud and just the availability of internet is what we're talking about. So it's going to be an essence talking about where is it going? Where is Africa going and why Africa? Yeah. You know, you've got to be there to listen. Right. So that's good. Yeah, good teaser. I'd love to attend that. I think it'll be a really interesting discussion. And I know one of the major drivers behind this, you know, other than the fact we talked about earlier as the sort of the maturity of the market from a cloud adoption perspective, but one of the things driving that being artificial intelligence specifically. Yeah, you know, AI is it's a different game because people think it's far away. It isn't, you know, it's the fourth industrial revolution as we put it. And, you know, it's progressively ever every revolution has been a lot shorter. AI is, you know, going exponentially growing. So we are actually cloud or rather our data centers actually ready to accommodate AI servers, which is high density servers. And why is that? Because a lot of the compute will now sit within Africa, within Kenya instead of it going all the way outside to Europe, South Africa, because that latency factor is going to be a very important factor. And, you know, it's this generation that really wants everything instantly. So it's going to be something that's required for, you know, for all the hyperscalers, all the cloud providers, content providers to be able to execute very quickly. So our data center is probably the only data center in Kenya right now that's actually ready to rock and roll in a big way. Interesting. Yeah. You know, and it makes me think when you think about these, the huge workloads that are required for AI and some of these other things. Sustainability always comes up, right. And I think we were talking before and you told me an interesting stat about the amount of renewable energy specifically in Kenya. Tell us, tell our viewers about that. 93% of the power, the actual power coming from the grid, 93% of it is renewable energy, right? And it's made up of geothermal, hydroelectric, wind and solar. Amazing. And it's green. So, you know, with people talking about going green, going carbon zero, we are already carbon zero as such, right? Yeah. And then for our redundancies, we have to make sure that we have available power just in case. It's a requirement, obviously, that from a lot of the hypers and just generally, we use biodiesel for generators. So we're green. Right. We're the only guys. Yeah. And that biodiesel is actually manufactured in Nairobi as well. So, you know, we're there. So having such a green grid, having good redundancies that are green and having a wonderful climate just makes the data center operations fantastic. Very, very easy to work with. And whoa, watch. There you go. That's the piece that's come in. And that's why you're... So, sorry about that, guys. But there we have it. But in general... Yeah. That's... We're talking about... We're talking about the earth here. So that was a good moment, but yes. And so, talking about, you know, just what happened. We have one of the largest wind farms in Africa that's based in Kenya. Generates 3,000 megawatts of power. Wow, yeah. So, yeah. And it's powerful. It can do a lot. Yeah. There you go. So, yeah, it's quite interesting. So Kenya's... It's actually very, very well set up in every aspect for data centers. In every aspect for cloud to grow. Because all these... Whoops. And it's coming through again. I think it likes you a lot. I know, apparently. I'm just... So, yeah. It's the right situation right now. And we've actually gone ahead and actually bought a second site. Okay, yeah. Which is even cooler than where we are currently. Because it's at a high elevation. And probably drops about 5 to 6 degrees centigrade, you know, compared to Nairobi right now. Which, you know, on a good day, Nairobi is probably about 24, 25 degrees centigrade, which is great. Yeah. This will drop it down to maybe 18 to 20, which is quite cool. So what does that mean? It's free cooling. Right. You're cooling your servers at a good rate. Yeah, so talk about sustainability. It's there. Check, check. Yeah, absolutely. And anything that's being built new there, which a lot is, I think, with new infrastructure builds, it's all being done so with sustainability and life from the onset, right? Absolutely. You know, we are very aware of, you know, of getting our carbon footprint down. Yeah. And I think in general, when I come back to Ajax Africa, we've had it as keep it Africa in a big way, where we push Africa in every aspect. So all our, the whole building has been built locally with local stone, et cetera. Yeah. We've had all our equipment provided by local existence. So they have franchises, make sure we have, you know, availability of service and everything. So generators, cooling, et cetera, all of that. So very much boosting Africa to grow. And Africa's quite aware, Kenya more so, about sustainability and going down to carbon zero. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, Naush, thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah. And what time's your panel? 12 noon tomorrow. 12 noon tomorrow. Okay. 12 noon tomorrow, we can come and watch you and hear more about growth of infrastructure in Africa and digital transition. And until then, thank you. And we look forward to continuing this conversation as the year progresses and into 2024 and beyond and all the great things that are to come. Yeah. No, no, no. Keep your eyes on Africa. It's going a long way now. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcasts. Happy networking.