Would it seriously have gone to anywhere else? Not saying there aren't other big economies (such as Nigeria), but is there any real reason this isn't a no brainer?
- Inconsistent electricity supply (brown outs are somewhat common)
- Poor physical infrastructure (at least a decade ago, copper cable theft was common)
- Business-unfriendly practices - I don't have the exact details, but you often have to run things through a local company with sufficient black representation. Sounds innocent enough, but does create a monopoly you have to deal with. Effectively a tax or bribe depending on perspective.
- Poor connectivity to the rest of the world (slowly getting there with more fibre cables arriving)
- (Edit) Severe water shortages, at least a couple years ago in Cape Town.
I would have thought somewhere North Africa would have been a real contender to make the decision require more thought. E.g. Morocco or Egypt, each with their own pros and cons.
The list of countries that I see as plausible for consideration in Sub-Saharan Africa are: Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Botswana, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya.
Most of the fiber cables in Africa run along the coasts, so inland countries are likely to have poor connectivity. Botswana is the only inland African country I'd contemplate, and that's because it has the massive benefit of being generally considered the most well-run country in Africa (outside of maybe the island nations). But I don't know what its internet connectivity looks like.
From the article it says their cable had four landings- Togo, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa. In my opinion the location isn't really the interesting part of the article, it points out how the other major cloud players are already set up in Africa. What took Google so long?
Much larger population, more deeply entrenched data (phone) usage, and cable landings that are close, in hops, to European cable landings like Marseille.
During a lunch conversation years ago with init7 (European IP transit) engineers we discussed a fictional CDN and I, naively, threw out Dubai as a potential regional hub and they scoffed. Egypt is where the peering is.
> is there any real reason this isn't a no brainer?
Yes, very much so. The South African energy crisis[1]. They've been having trouble keeping power on since 2007. They suffer virtually constant rolling blackouts. Running Google datacenters there there will probably come at great cost to others, so this probably took a lot of negotiating.
Having had to find a location to put a POP some years ago: Morocco, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria are also OK, depending on your needs. WACS strings along the entire Western coast of Africa, so anywhere along there that you can get reliable power, you can probably get a drop from WACS to the wider Internet and run your services.
To your point, tho, I ended up putting the POP in Cape Town, because it's a mega cable landing site and in a developed country.
A downside: there are (or at least were) some annoying "data export charges" levied per-Mb by the ZA government on traffic to services hosted outside of ZA. That's the whole reason I needed to put a POP there to begin with. Our backups over the wire were a little expensive, though.
Some parts of SA are pretty high crime. Id imagine they have high security in place. Many of my friends there have electric fences and walls around their homes and have still been robbed at gun point.
The biggest risk is the government. In that way, South Africa is the only choice. ...and even that one is not so great so I suspect they will limit their footprint.
I hope they hording diesel, the power provider is continuously forcing 4000MW+ load shedding/reduction, with 4+ hours of rolling blackout everyday over the entire country.
[+] [-] s_Hogg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yardstick|3 years ago|reply
- Inconsistent electricity supply (brown outs are somewhat common)
- Poor physical infrastructure (at least a decade ago, copper cable theft was common)
- Business-unfriendly practices - I don't have the exact details, but you often have to run things through a local company with sufficient black representation. Sounds innocent enough, but does create a monopoly you have to deal with. Effectively a tax or bribe depending on perspective.
- Poor connectivity to the rest of the world (slowly getting there with more fibre cables arriving)
- (Edit) Severe water shortages, at least a couple years ago in Cape Town.
I would have thought somewhere North Africa would have been a real contender to make the decision require more thought. E.g. Morocco or Egypt, each with their own pros and cons.
[+] [-] jcranmer|3 years ago|reply
Most of the fiber cables in Africa run along the coasts, so inland countries are likely to have poor connectivity. Botswana is the only inland African country I'd contemplate, and that's because it has the massive benefit of being generally considered the most well-run country in Africa (outside of maybe the island nations). But I don't know what its internet connectivity looks like.
[+] [-] dsm4ck|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsync|3 years ago|reply
Absolutely - Egypt.
Much larger population, more deeply entrenched data (phone) usage, and cable landings that are close, in hops, to European cable landings like Marseille.
During a lunch conversation years ago with init7 (European IP transit) engineers we discussed a fictional CDN and I, naively, threw out Dubai as a potential regional hub and they scoffed. Egypt is where the peering is.
[+] [-] guerrilla|3 years ago|reply
Yes, very much so. The South African energy crisis[1]. They've been having trouble keeping power on since 2007. They suffer virtually constant rolling blackouts. Running Google datacenters there there will probably come at great cost to others, so this probably took a lot of negotiating.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis
[+] [-] GauntletWizard|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theodric|3 years ago|reply
To your point, tho, I ended up putting the POP in Cape Town, because it's a mega cable landing site and in a developed country.
A downside: there are (or at least were) some annoying "data export charges" levied per-Mb by the ZA government on traffic to services hosted outside of ZA. That's the whole reason I needed to put a POP there to begin with. Our backups over the wire were a little expensive, though.
[+] [-] RantyDave|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] uptownfunk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koheripbal|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hotz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dead_Lemon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikro2nd|3 years ago|reply
That said, I'll bet solid Swiss money that Google is aware of the electricity supply situation here and has planned/is planning around it.
[+] [-] avrionov|3 years ago|reply
- Google promised to invest $1B in Africa
- Google will build subsea cable will cut across South Africa, Namibia, Nigeria and St Helena, connecting Africa and Europe.
- Investments in Startups and small businesses
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/06/google-confirms-1b-investm...
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unity1001|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myroon5|3 years ago|reply
https://cloud.google.com/about/locations