 Welcome to JSA TV coming to you today from Tech Capital's International Finance Forum 2023 in beautiful central London and joining me is Pavek Patni, Head of Corporate Development for Raxio Group. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's been a great day so far and I'm interested to hear your take on things here. The day has certainly been packed full of insights. It's been great to be here. I'm excited to listen to operators and investors across the world and for where region in which we play it's interesting to get the perspective of how some of the more mature markets are evolving because these sort of give us signals to how some of the markets in Africa will develop over time. I understand you're based in Dubai but a large part of your focus, the focus of your business is in Africa of course and I'm curious to hear sort of tell us a little bit about Raxio first of all you know where you're focused and then also what's driving the growth in the African markets. So Raxio we're a data center operator. We operate data centers exclusively in Africa. We build them as well as ourselves. We currently have a footprint across seven markets in Africa which has given us the widest footprint across the continent. We're delivering what you call cutting edge sort of data centers in markets in which there is a higher degree of latent demand and so we are addressing previously unaddressed needs. We're currently focused on building these data centers in in tier two markets but you know the reason we decided to end up going into this space was that we saw a fundamentally a real need for data center infrastructure in some of these markets driven by a couple of different things. Number one connectivity was improving so there was a lot of investment going into the fiber space both subsea and terrestrial fiber. There's a lot of investment going into the tower space but we saw that data centers were sort of the third leg of the stool and had been unaddressed for a long time. The other thing is that from a regulatory perspective governments wanted to really hone in on data sovereignty and wanted to keep local data local and so they can only do this if there's an adequate facility for customers to to use in country. And then the other thing is that there's just you know the demographics just sort of lend themselves to this massive demand for content on the continent that needs to be stored processed locally and so we're trying to build facilities that will be home to local enterprise governments but also international customers. It's really great to hear this perspective from you because there's been so much conversation about the the growing demand in in the markets in Africa so thank you for for that background but also a big focus that that we talk about and we've been hearing a lot about lately is around sustainability and I think that ties a little bit into some recent news that that you've had maybe you could tell us about that. Yeah actually I'm really proud to share that we recently raised a sustainability linked credit facility for 170 million dollars. This will allow us to continue building our data centers and continue delivering on the promise that we set out to achieve. But you know it's also a it's a it's an interesting turning point because we this is I'm not sure if this was the first one but it may be one of the the first sustainability linked facilities deals that have been done on the continent so we're really proud. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us but this is going to help us get there. So sustainability linked debt facility so tell us what what is involved in that what's the requirement. Well what it means is that the lenders have going to work closely with us to make sure that we are keeping control on several factors linked to sustainability. Number one which is top of mind for all data center operators is the PUE which is the power usage effectiveness ratio. Number two is the WUE which is the water usage ratio and number three is having representation of more women across the organization especially at management and board level. Yeah amazing that's that's fantastic to hear and so here we are I mean we're sort of approaching the second half of 2023 and I know no doubt you've had some great conversations with folks here today and and throughout the the year leading up to this event what's ahead for you when you when you look to the remainder of 2023 and into the following the years to follow. I mean you know when I think about it Africa is a big continent as a lot of people we have 54 countries on the continent and we're only in seven of them so I think that we're not going to stop here we're going to continue building we're going to continue growing our our organization our continue building more capacity in our countries and and and potentially announce some new locations. Fantastic well well thank you so for for those folks that are tuning in here to JSA TV who want to connect with you in the future how can they do that. They can reach us on on LinkedIn on Twitter we're at Raxio data centers on on all the platforms that can go to our website Raxio data Raxio Raxio data centers.com yeah we're easy to reach. Fantastic thank you thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your day today I know it's a busy day where there's a lot packed in thank you thank you for taking your your time. My pleasure. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV coming to you today from tech capitals international finance forum 2023. See you soon.