…Why OADC, UniCloud team up on Digital Sovereignty

By Prince Osuagwu

70% of data generated in Africa is residual in foreign countries with most of strategic organisations hosting their data outside the continent.

The security and economic dangers have well been highlighted by relevant bodies who know better why African data should remain on African soil. But, the fears have been more of sing-song for all the results the awareness is expected to produce.

However, two top organisations in Africa are no longer going to have it business as usual. They have decided to take action.

The two, UniCloud Africa (UCA), the premier pan-African sovereign cloud platform, and Open Access Data Centres (OADC), one of the leading data centre companies in Africa, are now teaming up in a strategic partnership to accelerate Africa’s digital transformation and independence.

Sovereignty cloud

Under this partnership, UniCloud Africa will host its enterprise-grade sovereign cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure within OADC’s world-class, carrier-neutral facilities in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa. This collaboration establishes a robust, localised foundation for governments and enterprises to modernise their operations while ensuring absolute data residency and regulatory compliance.

One Cloud, One Africa

The partnership aligns with UniCloud Africa’s “One Cloud, One Africa” strategy, which seeks to eliminate the high-latency and compliance risks associated with offshore cloud providers.

By utilizing OADC’s Tier-III certified infrastructure, UniCloud Africa will provide a high-performance environment for mission-critical workloads, supported by a contractual Tier-III certified uptime SLA.
CEO UniCloud Africa, Dr. Krish Ranganath, said: “Our mission is to provide the definitive foundation for Africa’s digital and economic independence. By hosting our sovereign infrastructure within OADC’s facilities, we are ensuring that African data remains on African soil. This partnership empowers our clients with low-latency access, local currency billing, and the security of ISO-certified, in-country data management that is tailor-made for the continent’s unique requirements.”

Digital Backbone

OADC’s footprint provides UniCloud Africa with the scale needed to serve key economic hubs. In Nigeria, it Leverages OADC Lagos’s campus to support the country’s booming fintech and enterprise sectors
In DRC Congo, it provides much-needed local cloud capacity in Kinshasa to drive the nation’s digital acceleration

In South Africa, it will Utilise OADC’s expanded national footprint and distributed scale to deliver resilient, geographically separated primary and disaster recovery solutions

CEO of OADC, Dr Ayotunde Coker, said: “We firmly believe that fully localised cloud infrastructure is critical for economic growth and Africa’s digital future.

“OADC is committed to providing the essential building blocks for a truly unified African digital ecosystem. Partnering with UniCloud Africa allows us to support a platform that is driving the next wave of innovation, from AI acceleration to cost-predictability.”

Beyond standard infrastructure, the partnership will support the deployment of UniCloud’s GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS), enabling local organisations to harness the power of AI, Machine Learning, and Big Data at scale. With zero data egress fees and billing in local currencies, the collaboration removes the financial barriers often posed by global cloud giants