Caroline Kamaitha, the Raxio Uganda’s General Manager making remarks during the report launch
HABARI DAILY I Kampala, Uganda I A new report has cautioned the Uganda Government on the widening gap in the ICT and data storage infrastructure.
“Uganda’s data consumption is growing as a result of expanding internet usage, e-commerce, and digital financial services, increased smartphone adoption and e-government, thus accelerating the need for reliable data infrastructure,” said Caroline Kamaitha, the Raxio Uganda’s General Manager.
She made the remarks early this week during the launch of the 2025 State of Data Centres in Uganda Report, held at their headquarters in the Namanve Industrial Park.
The report further points out that data centers need to be prioritized, since they are the backbone of the Internet and cloud-based services.
“They power businesses, advance public services, financial services, healthcare and education, the report further pointed, adding that unreliable grid power and rising diesel costs have businesses demanding greener, more resilient infrastructure.
The report highlights a growing preference for hydro- and solar-backed facilities, alongside efficient backup systems.
“This helps in the reduction of both carbon footprints and operational expenditure. Things are changing fast, since the African Green Data Center Market was valued at $2.68 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $9.69 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 17.45%.
Journalists, who toured the facility before the report launch, are being briefed on how the security facilities operate
Kamaitha said that the data center features a reliable 2N+1, which means that it has more than enough backup capacity to handle any single failure in its power, cooling, or security systems. This ensures uninterrupted data access.
It’s on record that Uganda has made significant strides in cloud adoption, and AI integration in the recent past, and needs to guard these gains.
The report further says that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming banking, retail, and healthcare, but it also demands high-performance computing environments.
“With financial institutions deploying AI for fraud detection and personalization, low-latency local hosting becomes critical to maintaining compliance and performance,” the report says.
The report adds that sustainability relating to environmental and power reliability concerns have moved green data centre investments to the top of the agenda.
“Businesses are prioritizing partners who leverage hydro and solar energy to ensure sustainability and operational continuity,” the report further reads in part.
Numerous challenges
The report brought forth several challenges, top on the list being high capital requirements, which continues to place private data center services, which are as a result out of reach for many.
“Added to this is the unreliable power supply, which creates volatility in the market, resulting in cybercrime, which rose by 37% in 2023, resulting in losses of Shs 1.5 billion.
“This underscore the need for robust security and disaster recovery solutions. In our operations at Raxio, our goal is to create infrastructure that’s not only reliable but also environmentally conscious, scalable, and inclusive,” Kamaitha added.
She called on public- and private-sector leaders to collaborate on fiber and 5G rollouts and to leverage public-private partnerships enshrined in Uganda’s National Development Plan III to extend connectivity beyond Kampala and into secondary cities.
Raxio Data Centre, a Tier III Facilities Data Centre, operates in other African countries such as Angola, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.
The full report https://www.raxiogroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/State-of-Data-Centres-in-Uganda-2024.pdf
