Kuwait’s Agility launches data centre sites across Middle East and Africa

Agility Logistics Parks (APL), a subsidiary of Kuwait’s Agility Public Warehousing Company, has launched tailored, master-planned data centre campus sites in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and Ghana.

The company said the sites are being prepared at its ultra-modern warehousing complexes in fast-growing markets and mega-cities that are looking to add hyper-scale data centre capacity and resolve data latency, security and compliance challenges to advance growth and improve competitiveness.

Agility said the sites that are being readied in its existing warehousing parks in Riyadh, Kuwait City, Cairo and Accra-Tema already have power allocation, fibre connectivity, building permits, strong sustainability features and high security.

Agility #Logistics Parks has announced the launch of tailored, master-planned #datacenter campus sites in #SaudiArabia, #Kuwait, #Egypt and #Ghana – with more to come. Get all the details: https://t.co/OlGTSBkHqT

— Agility (@Agility) March 7, 2023

The industrial and logistics real estate developer said it plans to build additional sites in other rapidly growing data centre markets including Nairobi, Casablanca and Lagos.

“ALP is uniquely poised with a portfolio of ideal sites across the Middle East and Africa.  The company’s site in Kuwait offers an existing sub-station with 80 MW capacity and the property is allocated for two 46,000 square meters data centre plots with capacity for expansion,” said Ronald Philip, senior director at ALP.

The unprecedented cloud transformation in the Middle East is being driven by smart government initiatives together with favourable demographic characteristics such as the region’s young and tech-savvy population.

Stephen Beard, global head of data centres at Knight Frank said, “We have strong feedback from our global clients that Agility’s value proposition in challenging emerging markets will help them with faster speed to market with a credible, institutional developer as a partner.”

Agility accelerate cloud deployment

Meanwhile, most global tech giants including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Alibaba and Oracle have announced plans to expand their data centre capacity in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

ALP said it is leveraging feedback from global data centre operators to prepare data centre campuses to support and accelerate deployment across the region. Research has revealed that the Middle East data centre market is likely to grow at a CAGR of around 7 per cent during the period 2020 to 2026.

Read: DIC, Khazna Data Centers announce two data storage facilities in Dubai

Last year, an executive from Bahrain’s Economic Development Board told Reuters that the Gulf state is in advanced talks for investment deals with cloud computing companies based in the US, China and the UAE.

Bahrain, which hosted AWS’s first data centres in the Middle East, became the first country to introduce a ‘data embassy law’, which allows countries to store data in the kingdom but under their jurisdiction.

AWS has two regions in the Middle East – Bahrain and the UAE – in addition to two AWS Direct Connect locations as well as two Amazon CloudFront edge locations, one in Dubai and another in Fujairah.

Also read: STC to spend $1bn to make Saudi Arabia a regional data hub

Higher demand for cloud computing has pushed technology companies to set up global data centres to speed up data transfer. In February, Oracle said it would invest $1.5bn in Saudi Arabia to expand its cloud business in the country.

The new region in Riyadh joins the existing Oracle Cloud Jeddah Region. The company also won contracts from Saudi Arabia’s $500bn flagship NEOM project, a futuristic mega city and economic zone that the kingdom is building on the Red Sea coast.

Google also plans to invest billions of dollars globally to compete with Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud space and the company is considering building more data centres in the region in addition to cloud regions in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.