Jeez what a way to dismiss the second largest continent and the second most populous landmass in the world.
I'd argue Africa is the best place to start such a thing. Cheap labour, plenty of renewable energy. The biggest issue it probably has is how little bandwidth it has, and might require additional sea cables.
But "africa is africa" is not a way reason to dismiss the continent.
you have never worked in africa. its cheaper to build a data centre in low earth orbit than most of africa
1 physical security is a problem, and in some countries like equatorial guinea or south africa foreigners arent allowed to own assets outright
2 cheap labour cant actually do anything. they are nice people but they cant read instruction manuals. cant set up data centres
3 no infrastructure. why zambia and kenya etc are 99% cellphones, is because there is no grid and no landlines because people steal all the copper wires
stories engineers have told me about building things in africa:
- i was working on an oil rig and one day the local employees started playing hide and seek and trying to kill us until a ransom was paid. for 48 hours we hid in a ventilation area until the ransom was organised, then had to go straight back to work with the people who were trying to murder us with power tools the day before for a month
- the person who gave my company a contract was chainsawed to death on a beach
bad grid, bad fibre, #146 in the world in electricity production per capita. less power output than many US states, rule of law risk, civil unrest risk, and data sovereignty (gdpr), must get expat engineers (and get them visas)
large scale offshore wind in norway could generate 50-75% of the entire US production with 80% uptime and then DCs built in norway or EU area
Jeez what a way to dismiss the second largest continent and the second most populous landmass in the world.
I'd argue Africa is the best place to start such a thing. Cheap labour, plenty of renewable energy. The biggest issue it probably has is how little bandwidth it has, and might require additional sea cables.
But "africa is africa" is not a way reason to dismiss the continent.