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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

Very surprised to read google doesn't have a single datacenter in Africa.

The continent is huge and if latency is important, they would definitely need multiple locations there.

check this out for scale http://kai.sub.blue/en/africa.html

The reason is simple. Basic network capacity is underdeveloped. Radio waves account for the bulk of communication. And most importantly, there's little to no direct connection between neighboring countries. So even if Google built a datacenter in Africa, it would not solve latency issues and might even make it worse because virtually all requests go outside of the continent.

Political stability is also a potential issue. If you're putting K-hundred-million dollars into a top-rate data center, risks associated with political instability become hard to stomach. Kenya is a great place to work, and quite open to outside investment, but had major problems two elections back, a scare at the last election, and ongoing problems with al-shabab. One of the best places to work in SSA, and still doesn't feel all that stable.

But if you put K-hundred-million dollars into a wind park, that problem goes away?

mostly true, but there is at least some undersea cable infrastructure to and between the countries. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WACS_(cable_system) as an example. Bottlenecks tend to be within countries where fibre is often not built out further than the capitals, especially in the poorest ones like Guinea and Sierra Leone, where I was working on networks this year. On the other hand, Cote D'Ivoire has a very good infrasructure, and internet is much more accessible than elsewhere. I believe Senegal, the digital powerhouse of the West Africa region, at least, has the same. But much internet is still only point-to-point microwave if you're lucky (and that supports telephone and mobile data communication backbones too), or VSAT, if you're not.

So in the end it is a chicken/egg problem - no communication structure because there is nothing to transmit.

No datacenter because there is no communications.

But I've also read that mobile banking is MASSIVE in africa, more than the entire rest of the world combined.

Plus Africa is extremely diverse, I suspect there must be several cities that could benefit from a google datacenter.

The reason for mobile banking being explosive in growth is linked to network speed and availability. Mobile banking in countries I've visited are operated by the mobile networks. Therefore, they don't suffer from round-trip issues as bank apps. Plus ease of use. They have more in common with PayPal than normal banking services.

Well, if you were going to attempt to invoke a super-intelligent being then a data-center in Africa might be just the right place to do it.

North America is ~9.5 million sq mi and Africa is ~11.7 million sq mi according to Wikipedia...

That infographic left out Alaska, Canada and Mexico.

USA is 10,000 square KM and Africa is 30,000 sq KM

http://kai.sub.blue/en/africa.html

A square that is 100km on both sides is 10,000 square km. I always imagined the US was larger than that.

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