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> I realize that Africa is an enormous continent; I'm just curious if this doesn't also help out developers and startups in places like Nigeria...? I don't have

> I realize that Africa is an enormous continent; I'm just curious if this doesn't also help out developers and startups in places like Nigeria...? I don't have a sense of the topology of the Internet throughout Africa vs particular African nations and the rest of the world. It probably doesn't help developers in Nigeria get lower latency or cheaper access to AWS, but it may help them get more customers more quickly, as some other obvious markets that might be a better fit for services they develop would benefit from the region in South Africa. However, it is quite expensive to operate data centres in Nigeria (as the electrical supply is not very reliable; I know that at least quite recently many DCs there need to run on generator about 10% of the time, I don't know if that has changed since). There are, however, some initiatives to get more international intra-continental peering going (e.g. I believe at present most traffic between Nigeria and South Africa transits London).

SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
> data centres in Nigeria ... the electrical supply is not very reliable Electrical supply in Cape Town has had issues too: https://www.google.com/search?q=cape+town+load+shedding https://www.google.com/search?q=cape+town+load+shedding I expect that data centers will use a lot of power in summer when the temperature outside gets around 40 C (over 100 F)
- nostrebored 8y ago
  Large swathes of the Western Cape have very reliable electricity, and I would assume that these areas are being targeted for availability zones
- ti_ranger 8y ago
  > > data centres in Nigeria ... the electrical supply is not very reliable > Electrical supply in Cape Town has had issues too: https://www.google.com/search?q=cape+town+load+shedding https://www.google.com/search?q=cape+town+load+shedding Oh wow, one day of residential load shedding in the past year. Nigeria had a country-wide electrical outage this year: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/254308-updated-nigeria-experiences-total-power-outage-across-country.html https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/254308-updated... A few years ago, I was somewhat involved with some data centres in Nigeria, which ran on generators 2-3 times a day for at last an hour each time, every day, for more than a year, due to the electrical grid in the city (Lagos) going down. The locals indicated that this was normal (e.g. had been like this for years). Ghana has much more reliable electricity than Nigeria. A few more articles: http://dailypost.ng/2018/07/24/nigeria-may-not-stable-power-next-5-years-electricity-distributors/ http://dailypost.ng/2018/07/24/nigeria-may-not-stable-power-... https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-challenge-keeping-nigerias-lights/ https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-challenge-keepi... "To cope with the frequent blackouts and lack of access, a quarter of Nigerians relied on generators in 2016" South Africa's electricity generation (Eskom) has problems, but nothing like Nigeria's (yet).

SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago

> data centres in Nigeria ... the electrical supply is not very reliable Electrical supply in Cape Town has had issues too: https://www.google.com/search?q=cape+town+load+shedding https://www.google.com/search?q=cape+town+load+shedding I expect that data centers will use a lot of power in summer when the temperature outside gets around 40 C (over 100 F)

nostrebored 8y ago
Large swathes of the Western Cape have very reliable electricity, and I would assume that these areas are being targeted for availability zones
ti_ranger 8y ago
> > data centres in Nigeria ... the electrical supply is not very reliable > Electrical supply in Cape Town has had issues too: https://www.google.com/search?q=cape+town+load+shedding https://www.google.com/search?q=cape+town+load+shedding Oh wow, one day of residential load shedding in the past year. Nigeria had a country-wide electrical outage this year: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/254308-updated-nigeria-experiences-total-power-outage-across-country.html https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/254308-updated... A few years ago, I was somewhat involved with some data centres in Nigeria, which ran on generators 2-3 times a day for at last an hour each time, every day, for more than a year, due to the electrical grid in the city (Lagos) going down. The locals indicated that this was normal (e.g. had been like this for years). Ghana has much more reliable electricity than Nigeria. A few more articles: http://dailypost.ng/2018/07/24/nigeria-may-not-stable-power-next-5-years-electricity-distributors/ http://dailypost.ng/2018/07/24/nigeria-may-not-stable-power-... https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-challenge-keeping-nigerias-lights/ https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-challenge-keepi... "To cope with the frequent blackouts and lack of access, a quarter of Nigerians relied on generators in 2016" South Africa's electricity generation (Eskom) has problems, but nothing like Nigeria's (yet).