When people talk about the future AI, smart technology, the “cloud” it often sounds like magic happening somewhere far away. But in reality, none of it works without the real, physical world: buildings packed with powerful computers, networks of cables connecting us all, and electricity that has to be there every single second.
In the article below, Herman de Vries, Chief Executive Officer at ASI Connect takes a closer look at how South Africa’s digital future is being built and why it matters to all of us.
South Africa is building fast
South Africa is in the middle of a building boom. The country’s data centre industry is already worth about USD 2.55 billion, and it’s expected to double to USD 5.28 billion by 2031.
South Africa already leads the rest of Africa in this space, holding about 40% of the regional market. By the end of 2024, Johannesburg alone had 15 data centres and at least six more are on the way.
The hidden physical side of “digital”
New technologies like AI need to process huge amounts of information almost instantly. To keep up, data centres are being upgraded to much higher standards. In the data centre world, buildings are rated in “tiers” a kind of reliability scorecard that tells you how likely they are to stay up and running, no matter what.
- Older-style data centres (Tier 1 and 2) are becoming outdated because they can’t guarantee the constant uptime modern businesses need.
- The most advanced (Tier 4) data centres built to stay running even if something goes wrong are the fastest-growing type, expanding by nearly 20% each year.
Regular server rooms simply can’t keep up with these demands anymore.
Building smarter data centres
A few key things need to change to prepare for this next wave of technology:
- Keeping things cool. Data centres generate a lot of heat. Normally, water-based cooling systems handle this, but South Africa doesn’t have water to spare. So, operators are turning to smarter alternatives, such as cooling systems that reuse water in a closed loop or systems that cool equipment using outside air instead of water.
- Better cabling. Imagine cables, fibre and copper wires, as highways speeding data to its destination. South Africa already has ten undersea cables connecting it to the world (with two more coming soon), boosting internet speed and reliability. But all that only matters if the wiring inside every business is up to scratch, too.
Combining systems. Instead of keeping computing, storage, and networking in separate silos, many data centres now blend them into one smooth system. It matters because AI could drive up to 70% of all global data centre demand by 2030, a leap from less than half in 2024.
The power problem
Here’s where South Africa faces a unique challenge: electricity.
More than a third of the country’s roughly 42,000 MW of power still comes from coal. Load-shedding (planned power cuts) remains a real risk and for a data centre, even a brief power dip can cause major disruption.
Because of this, the industry is moving toward generating its own power, often using renewable energy, rather than depending entirely on the national grid, reliable power isn’t a “nice to have” for data centres, it has to be planned for from day one.
Building all of this, data centres, cabling, and power systems usually involves several different companies: one for fibre, one for backup power, one for the data centre itself. The problem is that when something goes wrong, you end up making phone calls to three different providers instead of one.
ASI Connect is a South African ICT company that brings all these moving parts together, IT infrastructure, telecoms, energy, and managed services under one roof. The idea is simple: one team that sees the whole picture, so problems get solved faster, and everything works together seamlessly, not in messy bits and pieces.
Learn more about ASI Connect’s services
