Equinix Inc, a digital infrastructure company, announced earlier today it has completed the deal to acquire West African data centre and connectivity solution provider, MainOne at $320 million, marking the beginning of Equinix’s long term strategy of expanding into Africa.
Equinix’s long term strategic plan in Africa has since been to become a leading African carrier-neutral digital infrastructure company. It hopes to harness this acquisition opportunity at a full range with transformative technologies and connectivity, especially to Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana.
An extension of Platform Equinix into West Africa will give domestic and international organisations access to global and regional markets.
Equinix notes that MainOne’s stationing in Lagos enhances its chances of becoming one of the most exciting tech businesses to emerge from Africa and a key connectivity hub for the West Africa region.
In Nigeria, there are great opportunities to expand its digital service specifically because it has one of the largest populations and the biggest economy. Nigeria is also home to some of the most innovative digital ecosystems in fintech and content digital media.
About Equinix
Equinix (Nasdaq: EDIX) is an infrastructure company that enables digital leaders, through its platform, to come together and interconnect the foundational infrastructure that powers their success. It was founded in 1998 by Al Avery and Jay Adelson.
The company has since grown tremendously, and its mission is to enable businesses today gain access to all the right places, people, partners, stakeholders and possibilities they need to accelerate advantage.
The services Equinix provides will help these businesses scale in their productivity, speed the launch of their digital services and multiply their values.
Globally, Platform Equinix is comprised of 240 data centres across 66 metros and 27 countries on 6 continents, providing data centre and interconnection services to 10,000+ companies including more than 50% of Fortune 500 companies.
On its part, MainOne, founded by Funke Opeke, has gathered numerous assets and has begun to make already has laid a foundation in the African market. MainOne has:
- An extensive submarine network of 7,000 kilometres from Portugal to Lagos, Accra and the West African coast, with landing stations in Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
- A terrestrial network of over 1,200 kilometres of reliable terrestrial fibre in Lagos, Edo and Ogun States. Connectivity to terrestrial sites extends across 65 points of presence (PoPs) in cities across Portugal, Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.
- Four operational data centres, which will add more than 64,000 gross square feet of space to Platform Equinix, and an additional 570,000 square feet of land for future expansions.
- Access to key internet exchanges enabling low latency to key global networks, including Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook.
- An estimated 800+ B2B customers, including major international technology enterprises, social media companies, global telecommunications operators, financial service companies and cloud service providers.
- Nearly 500 employees and a management team with a deep understanding of
local and international markets - The facilities currently generate approximately US$60 million annualised (Q2’21LQA) revenue with a purchase multiple of approximately 14x EBITDA.
Now, MainOne will operate under a new brand ‘MainOne, an Equinix company’ and Funke Opeke will continue to lead the new brand of MainOne.
Technext Newsletter
Get the best of Africa’s daily tech to your inbox – first thing every morning.
Join the community now!
