Teraco Completes JB4 Expansion, Creating Africa’s Largest Standalone Data Centre

Teraco , a Digital Realty Company, Africa’s largest interconnection hub and vendor-neutral data centre provider, has announced the completion of its JB4 Bredell Campus data centre expansion located in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg, South Africa.

The 30MW addition expands JB4 to being the largest standalone data centre built in Africa, servicing 50MW of critical IT power load.

This new phase at JB4 comprises six data halls, incorporates numerous new design enhancements and, in another African first, each hall supports 5MW of allocated critical IT power load. The new data halls are fully liquid-to-liquid cooling enabled, allowing clients to deploy high-density, air-cooled cloud deployments and direct-to-chip cooling for denser artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.

JB4 has been designed with sustainability at its core, incorporating a state-of-the-art closed-loop chilled water system that provides free air cooling, coupled with AI enabled technology to configure data hall cooling in real time, based on IT load and load dispersion. This innovative design achieves industry-leading Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), significantly reducing energy consumption while using zero water during ongoing cooling – an important feature on a continent facing water scarcity and supply reliability.

The JB4 expansion, built to stringent global hyperscale specifications, contributes significantly to the South African and sub-Saharan African data centre footprint. This follows the recent completion of Teraco’s new hyperscale JB5 Isando facility, which adds another 30MW of critical IT power load to Teraco’s Isando Campus in Ekurhuleni.

Jan Hnizdo, Teraco CEO, says the company is well positioned to continue its exceptional growth, thanks to sustained demand from enterprises and hyperscale clients for hybrid cloud and cloud deployments.

“South Africa has become the technology and data centre hub for sub-Saharan Africa, acting as a springboard for cloud, AI and content provision into Africa. Massive global investments in undersea cables, such as Equiano and 2Africa, further strengthen this position. This will enable global cloud providers to service not only the South African market but also the rest of the sub-Saharan African region.

– Jan Hnizdo, CEO, Teraco 

“Teraco is dedicated to expanding its capacity across key hubs, ensuring our clients have the flexibility to scale and fully leverage digital transformation across the region. We continue to make significant investments in ICT infrastructure and have established Africa’s largest data centre platform. We are proud to offer open-access interconnection and deliver world-class data centre solutions to all our clients.”

– Jan Hnizdo, CEO, Teraco

The JB4 facility is located in the heart of Ekurhuleni’s Aerotropolis. It is here that Teraco’s data centres already provide access to a wide choice of network service providers, regional IXPs, content delivery networks, cloud service provider on-ramps, and peering at the eighth largest internet exchange in the world, NAPAfrica.

Teraco’s growing data centre platform stands at 189MW of critical power load which includes the Isando Campus (JB1/JB3/JB5: 70MW), Bredell Campus (JB2/JB4: 64MW), Cape Town Campus (CT1/CT2: 53MW), and Durban (DB1: 2MW).

Local and global organisations accelerating their digital transformation rely on Teraco to scale their IT infrastructure, embracing hybrid multi-cloud architectures, and seamlessly interconnecting with strategic business partners within the Platform Teraco ecosystem. The addition of new facilities strengthens this ecosystem by offering enterprises a secure platform for IT infrastructure deployment, delivering high performance, reliability, and access to the broadest range of carriers and network service providers – an essential foundation for building a resilient and future-ready interconnection strategy.

Key facts about JB4

• JB4 is the largest standalone data centre built in Africa with 80 000m2 of building structure, serviced by 80MW of utility power supply, providing 50MW of critical IT power load.
• JB4 features environmentally conscious designs including a zero-water closed loop cooling system and specialised monitoring technology to improve energy efficiency.
• The total facility comprises 14 data halls, making up 17 000m2.
• The first data centre in Africa to provide 5MW of critical IT load within a single data hall.
• Located in the Bredell Campus, Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg, alongside the R21 business corridor.
• The facility has multiple fibre paths to the Teraco Isando Campus connectivity hub (JB1/JB3/JB5) located 20 kilometres away.
• JB4 is a significant addition to the sub-Saharan Africa’s data centre footprint.
• JB4 is built in line with global hyperscale requirements and international compliance standards, and will augment the existing portfolio of ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 50001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, PCI-DSS, and ISAE3402 certified data centre facilities.