There are several Data Centers in Kenya that offer colocations services, as well as other private data centers that host private data. This growth in data Centers was driven by growth in the Information Technology sector, adoption of technology by many leading institutions, and a highly connected population. In the beginning, there were few colocation facilities that met the Tier III status, with some local companies opting to build their own Data Centers for internal use, such as Equity Bank. With time, several players have set up commercial data centers, and here is a list of companies with data centers in Kenya.
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Telkom Kenya
Telkom Kenya, which has recently merged with Airtel Kenya, owns a Tier III data center in Nairobi. The facility has 160m2 of IT space, which can it 30 racks.
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East Africa Data Center
The East Africa Data Center is the leading Data Center in Kenya, owned and operated by Liquid Telecom. Located in Nairobi, this data center boasts of Tier III certification from the uptime institute, and has 2000m2 of IT space with a capacity of 640 racks.
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MBA1 by iColo
iColo is a Kenyan company that runs a data Center in Mombasa, and currently constructing a second Data Center in Nairobi. The Mombasa data center has 500m2 of IT space, while the Nairobi data center will have a similar space. The Nairobi Data Center is set to open in 2019.
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MTN
MTN runs two Data Centers in Nairobi and Mombasa. These Data Centers are Tier III certified, with a capacity of 70 racks.
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Safaricom Data Center in Thika
Safaricom Limited, the biggest telecommunication services provider has a Tier II data center, located in Thika. The facility has a capacity for 220 racks.
In spite of the growing number of Data Centers in Kenya, most of Kenya’s data continue to be hosted outside the country, with majority in Europe and the US. This due to the high cost of Data Centers in Kenya, and relatively low cost of similar services in Europe and US. This is likely to change when the Kenya Data Protection Bill of 2018 is passed into law. The law will require any institution handling or processing Kenyan data to keep a copy of the data locally.