Konza City is far from taking off, but the ultramodern city is taking key steps towards achieving its goals, although we are not certain how long it is going to take.
One of the city’s projects has been the development of a data centre. The first phase has since been completed, while the second one is a couple of weeks away from completion, one year after the first project was concluded.
Word from the technopolis has revealed that once the data centre is up and running, it will be East Africa’s largest facility with a capacity of 1.6 petabytes. The smart data centre will also play a key role in supporting the demands and application deployment models, including IoT and other modern technologies.
The development will also align with business needs that continue to evolve. To this end, companies, both big and small, are demanding more from such facilities.
It has also been reported that the data centre will target developers and small firms, as well as digital workers.
At the moment, Phase I is already hosting 10 companies.
Green data centres are not, however, unique to Konza’s goals. Data centre companies such as iColo are already constructing solar-powered data centre facilities at the Kenya Coast.
In 2021, Konza and the Embassy of Israel hosted an innovation challenge that received notable participation from startups in and out of Kenya.
Three of the startups that took part in the fair are already piloting their products in the technopolis. They are: Personal Watchguard for intelligent asset management; Ekraal Hub for smart parking management; and H-Pass for access management.
