The giant telecommunication company has set up its first China-assembled data centre in Addis Ababa as it prepares to start commercial operations in Ethiopia.
The $100 million Safaricom facility is built on tier three standards and is the size of a shipping container. This is not the only milestone by the consortium in the Horn of Africa. Popular mobile money transfer service M-PESA is fully functional. The first successful phone call was made on February 5th and other services such as mobile internet, text messaging and calls to other networks followed suit.
The company will create jobs in the country as it is estimated that at least 1,000 people will be employed by the end of the year and 1.5 million job opportunities will be created in 10 Years. In the next five years, Safaricom intends to establish two more data centres, one in Addis Ababa and another in Adama.