 Welcome to JSA TV Europe, together with the Green Data Movement for this quarter's live event focused on closing the digital divides with digital infrastructure deployments. I'm Jean-Marc Lima and joining me today is Jasper Lankrost, Chief Executive Officer for Actis Converged Partners, the leading Pan-African data center platform. Jasper, as always, welcome on the show and it's a pleasure speaking to you. I hope you've been keeping well. Hi, Jel, yeah, I've been, I've been doing really well and a lot of traveling over the last past month, a lot of development happening in our business. It's always exciting and never a dull moment, I would say, right? No, and it was great to see you in London a few weeks ago as well. But let's talk about digital divide. I mean, how serious is this across Africa, across the continent, where you deploy? So it's a very interesting one. So when we focus on Africa, right, and more specifically, Sub-Saharan Africa, we, we very basically have the world's largest digital divide gap. So, so the region faces the greatest disparities you need in internet access with an estimate of 33 percent of the population having access to the internet, leaving more or less 800 to 900 million people behind, which is significant. So, yeah, it's big. It's big. And that's why also people say it's Africa's moment. A lot happening, a lot of investment taking place, as you know. So it's a very exciting time to be part of this digital transformation, which we're all contributing to. No, absolutely. And Greg, if I'm wrong on my numbers now, but Africa is about a billion people at the moment and it's very quickly going to be three billion in just a couple of decades, two or three decades. So the opportunity is huge. And of course, bridging the gap now, it's more important than ever before it grows even bigger than what it is. But of course, I mean, you've already kind of mentioned access to the internet. But how can data centers help really bridge this divide and bring as many people online as possible? And maybe also, so there's this side of the infrastructure, but maybe what else can operators be doing to bring people online? So maybe stuff around education, for example. Yeah, so first of all, as you mentioned, 1.3 to 1.4 billion people and growing at a fast rate. And of course, with a very young age group of people, like a median of like 18, 19 years on the continent, we've seen a huge growth of internet access happening, but still a lot of people are behind. When you speak about digital technology in Africa, I think it's a combination of a couple of things, right? It's the accessibility. So basically, closing the mobile usage gap, which is seen as the largest contributor to the digital divide in Africa. Although mobile infrastructure coverage has increased in Africa, the usage gap has widened from 36% to 2014 to 53% in 2020. And there was all part of a Carnegie Endowment of International Peace Report just to provide source as well. Delta must be noted that a significant majority of users in South Africa are still using 2G or 3G networks. So as a comparison, about 85% of the world's population lives within the 4G networks, but it's estimated that nearly half of them are still offline and not connected. So the second part, apart from accessibility, it's about affordability, right? The high cost of internet access and internet-enabled devices relative to the income levels. And as we all know, it's quite a significant amount of countries in Africa where their spend isn't really high or which is basically poor countries for people with low incomes. And then the third part around the digital divide is basically the skills element, right? Another barrier to the digital adoption in South Africa is literacy and the lack of digital skills to be able to use it. So accessibility, affordability, and skill sets are a huge issue. So when you look at what, how data centers can help address the issue is basically first of all our investments, right? We put more digital infrastructure foundations on the ground, on the continent to support better digital infrastructure needs. However, as many of us know, it's about the complete supply chain, the digital logistic supply chain, if you will, from subsea cables, data centers, metro fiber, cross-border connectivity, mobile connectivity, so lots of investments need to be done. And then not on today's call, of course, or on today's interview, but having access to skills, having access to power, and all of those other challenges which we're facing to be able to make those investments work and work more importantly. So with our investments across the African continent, we make the internet more accessible and affordable by supporting the needs for more local data, local traffic exchange, and local applications. So basically it will reduce the latency and the cost of data use in the digital supply chain. So with our investments, we're building the necessary data hubs that allows the interconnecting of networks. And you need to think about networks, meaning the ones who are consuming the end user networks, the ISPs and the mobile operators, with networks which provide the content and the cloud providers. But all in all, we need more data on the content close to the end user to make it more accessible and more useful. But just to give you an indication about cost and portability, we need the same process as we've seen in New York. For example, in London in 2002, the price for megawatt in London was about $150 for next. Today it's less than $15 cents, so thousands of less cost. So we see a similar trend across the continent, but we believe that by 2030, we hope to see price parity with the rest of the world in at least the countries which are coastal and which have access to the subsequent. Basically, where we come as in-state network operators to build that foundation for others to use it, because as you know, we operate a carrier neutral data center practice to allow our carrier community to basically build that ecosystem to support a data function in the region or on the continent. Okay, I do have a follow-up question on power, but before going into that, who do you think it's going to be who's going to really lead the developments in the next, say, 10 to 20 years? And I'm talking about African and non-African operators, because of course, we've seen a lot of foreign investment coming in with guys like Equinix, Distribute Realty, Juventus, Data Centers, Distribute Bridge, and all that. But Africa does have some bigger data center platforms like the one you're building, there's Pax Data Centers, there's Kassava, Africa Data Centers, Perattus. There's quite a few of them. How do you think that's going to play out in the long run? Are the foreigns going to buy the platforms or are we going to really see a big African platform taking the leads on the continent? In all honesty, I truly hope for the continent that we all will have a stake in the game, because there's 54 countries, 1.3 billion people, and we are lacking behind big time. So although some will say, conservation is happening or have you not, if you take a look at how much data is in the capacity currently installed in use with South Africa leading, it's close to nothing if you compare it to mature markets where there's less, where the population is less than 1.3 billion people in Africa. So I hope that everyone will do its best to invest the opportunity in both tier one markets, if you can already speak to tier one markets in Africa, tier two markets, tier three markets, because the end of the day, to reach the 1.3 billion, to close that gap, the digital divide gap, lots and lots of investments have to be done across the continent. And I hope that really acquisitions and mergers will take some time and for all of us to strongly believe in the possibilities the continent has to offer to many of us. So instead of having the same gate with less companies, grow the cake for everyone to chip in and to benefit from that as well, both companies, both investors, and of course, all the end users who will, by using digital services, grow their economic profile, and therefore, everyone will reap the benefit of that. Okay. And then of course, I mean, the digital divide is only just one, unfortunately one of the divides that we have on the continent, one of them also being power, which also affects data centers. Last weekend, I was actually in Berlin for the Olympics and I was chatting to the CTO and the CEO of the Olympics, and they were saying that one of the biggest constraints that they've got to also get the athletes online, it does come down sometimes to just not even being able to power the devices at home. So let alone power the cloud power data center. How, I mean, I don't even know if how serious is the right question, but what's the current state of the power markets to really power these facilities? Like how easy, how is it or not easy, is it to find power in Africa to build a data center? First of all, I always make a statement that when we speak of Africa, we need to speak of 54 different countries. Every country has its own strengths and weaknesses. Some countries are at the ability and the opportunity of a lot of natural resources. Take Ethiopia, for example, hydrogen, wind turbines, and that's basically Ethiopia, right? Not only Ethiopia, but also Kenya. Wind solar, that's a huge solar plant being built on the constant in Morocco, for example. But then you go to South Africa and you have the issue of load shedding and power wheeling, but then the government opened up and said, you guys, you can build your own power plant. So there's a lot of development going in there. And where maybe Africa was lacking behind on the power infrastructure, maybe Africa's facing the same problems as we face in other parts of the world, where there's a lack or a constraint of power and therefore the market's opening up for alternative sources, being combination of renewable, maybe gas fed turbines and all of that. So it may be in the future, even massive power storage to close the gaps of load shedding issues. So I think a part of investing in additional infrastructure, a lot of more investments can and will be made on the continent, not only for the additional infrastructure in general, to power the continent properly. So it's that combination which will help and grow. But yeah, for example, what we do in Nigeria, and you know, we have a business there called REC Center. We're expanding that business. We moved after 10 years operating on diesel generators, 100% of our time without any time of time. We've moved to the most economical and renewable situation to get in the country in that particular region where we operate. And we're now fully powered primary source, which is gas, the potential gas. But if you would move to Kenya over here, playing an entry, then as you know, the grid is more efficient and more reliable than it's in other parts in Africa. And the power you can get from the grid is over 75%. Are you renewable? Are you still there? Yes, I was asking. And therefore, every market, you need to look at it, each and every market on its own. And some markets will be fed from other markets. If they're closed and ours will just be, let's say, wilting to other countries. If we look at the continents, and we're going to act as in a second, but if we're looking to the continent, which country or region within the continent do you think is in most needs of this infrastructure investment right now? My view is that at the end of the day, we will all be interconnected. And you need to start at the edges. And to basically build the connectivity, both power connectivity, so interconnectivity network, networking from the edges into the country, that hence the subsea cable capacity, which is being built and delivered, right? It will operate as a highway across the continent and around the continent to reach other countries. But over time, we will need more investments into cross-border connectivity, metro connectivity, to basically get Africa wired, put it that way. Because mobile is great to get access to the internet, but the future of mobile 5G is wired, right? To basically to be able to support the high data volumes of consuming, but also data volumes of traffic. So in all honesty, it requires a bigger plan over a longer period of time. And I think we as an industry and participant in the industry are already building on what makes more sense. Because at the end of the day, we also want to return to our investments and building in remote locations, which is not connected, becomes a very expensive power shell without connectivity, which cannot be, or which is not defined as a data system. No, it makes sense. Nothing is going to happen tonight today. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. Absolutely right. But it's reassuring, Joel, that we see companies like Liquid and Biobot to invest and build in, let's say, east to west connectivity across the continent. So that we already see heavy investments being done into terrestrial in combination with the subsidy cable systems powering the data centers on those data or network locations to build that infrastructure. But it will take time. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the subsidy cable is an amazing industry in Africa. The deployments are happening. And then we are not even talking that much about the terrestrial deployment of fiber as well, which are happening across the continent. We always focus on the ocean. We never focus on the terrestrial deployment. But someone who's deploying a lot, and not so much on the fiber side, but on the data center spaces, you, of course, you've already mentioned RAC Center. We can see from your background as well. That's your main platform on the continent. So first, maybe just give us a quick view of ACTIZ and RAC Center. What's the collaboration there? And what does the platform do in terms of data center provisioning? And then what's next for RAC Center? So ACTIZ and Covert just came together in 2020 and they founded the platform called Color West, which then took a majority, with a Georgia stake into a business called RAC Center in Nigeria. We then doubled the capacity in Nigeria in Lagos. And we're now constructing a 12 megawatt high-skill-ready facility which will go live at the beginning of 2024. We see a lot of traction in Nigeria, and as you are aware, there's a lot of investments being made because Nigeria is the biggest economy of Africa and it's definitely the largest market outside of Africa for these types of developments. We've also seen the large hybrid-scale making announcements already to enter into Nigeria, Lagos, so which we will support with our infrastructure. Apart from what we're doing in Nigeria, and that's quite a lot of work to be done because 12 megawatts of high-skill IT is already sort of the total, the current total market installed capacity, which is doubling that capacity in the market already. We're also, the building behind me is designed for our deployment and for the construction of our facility in Kenya. So we already have a acquired lens. We've looked at where the other data center operators are to basically be able to build a market to support the content and cloud platforms coming to East Africa as well. Apart from that, we have more in the pipeline looking into other markets, both Sub-Saharan and North Africa, but this is all, let's say, under consideration. So hopefully within the coming year, two years, we will be able to have this conversation and explain how we've expanded the platform across the content. What we are building, as a platform, is a network of carrier-neutral data centers across the content to basically bring connectivity to local networks and link them to the global operators to support the localization of data and application. So basically building the data apps. For that, we also work with the local internet changes such as Nigeria, the Nigerian Internet Exchange, but also working on, we have a global partnership with Dicke as well to deliver internet exchange services to those markets to be able to provide reliable internet. So we will have invite all the operators to our facilities being carrier-neutral or we will help invest by resources, time and labor to also basically drive and accelerate the growth of the local data center, data ops, if you will. So if you think about what else we can do to close the digital divide gap as well, in general, I mean, we need more investment into the digital infrastructure and powering up all the digital infrastructure. Definitely improve the cross-border connectivity to also connect people in the rural areas, which are remote and which don't even access, which are in that gap, the accessibility gap. What's also very, very important as I mentioned is affordability is to drive the cost down and that can be done by improving the accessibility and more education. And that's definitely, I guess, a responsibility of the people who are investing by doing educational programs, trainings. We also support the local engineering community by giving them hands-on training on how to start peering, for example, to be able to make sure that the internet works better at a more affordable cost. Jeff, that's what we work now. It's quite a challenge. Okay. As you were talking, and maybe this is a very bad comparison, you can tell me if it's wrong or not, I was kind of thinking it's almost like the journey that India went through as well. Of course, it's still going, but India also had this journey where prices had to come down, then investment came in, they built a lot, which allowed a lot more development, especially on the engineering industry, the engineering industry, so software and all that. You think that's kind of the journey that Africa is on, and you think it's going to be faster than India. Which is still on the journey, but it's developed quite a lot in the last five, six years. I don't have a very good view of India, but my view in general is that maybe the majority of Indians have a better skill set because of the previous industry revolutions, like a lot of outsourcing was done in India, right, which isn't really the case in Africa. Sorry, I lost my screen there. And if India also, a lot of the digital infrastructure needs to be built, like both the rest skill and the data centers, then there is a similarity, but I'm assuming from where I'm sitting and seeing the numbers of all the investments and the new data center built, it's a magnitude of what's currently happening in Africa. So in that case, I'm still looking behind, but once we unlock the potential of the continent with 1.3 billion people being the fastest drone continent in the world, that's basically why I was saying this is Africa's moment. But we are still in the early stages of that development. Oh, no, no, absolutely. I mean, India is growing billions and billions and billions, not knowing itself, but the investors in the operators. You can easily sum up 40, 50 billion at least announced in the last three years alone. So Africa is probably more... And I'm assuming that the geopolitical order, the political situation in India... Yes, I agree with you as well, yes. After the 54 countries in Africa, it's less of a challenge than it is in one country. Yeah, it's easy and tax-wise and everything, things have changed a lot. But I was going to ask, because we'll have to close in a second as well. It's always a pleasure speaking to you, but if we were to sit down in 12 months again, what would you like to see done to really help, not fully close, because it wasn't enough, but to kind of help their journey towards closing the digital divide gap in Africa? Again, if you look at two things we control, and then the third one is more the support part on the skill set, the two things we really control is investing. Investing more in this structure, that's part of our journey, right? Is to open up more facilities across the continent. And in the March, we are already operating, so that's happening. Secondly, really drive the agenda to localize data and serve some local applications by filling truly carrying into facilities and work with our carry community to basically interconnect and lower the cost and improve their latency or the speeds of their data towards end users. That's really what we're about and what we're building at the moment. And that will definitely contribute towards that closing the digital gap, but it's only one part of the process. This is only the tip of the iceberg. There's still a long way to go to get all this done, but we will get there eventually, that's the hope. Jasper, as always, it's a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you so much for coming on. As for your home, thank you for watching JSA TV Live. Don't forget to check out our social channels for more content. Until next time, happy networking.