TMT · Data Centres / Digital Infrastructure
Structuring a Hyperscale Data Centre Entry into a New Market
Timtony built the entry thesis, commercial architecture and investor narrative behind a hyperscale operator's first campus in a new African market.
Challenge
A global data centre operator had identified a high-growth African market as its next campus, but the local picture was unforgiving: two incumbents with long-standing customer relationships, an opaque power-allocation process, and an investment committee that had already rejected one version of the entry case. The team needed a thesis the board could underwrite, not another market scan.
Solution
We rebuilt the entry case from the demand side — interviewing the hyperscale, financial-services and public-sector buyers the campus would actually need to fill — then re-engineered the commercial model around anchor-tenant economics, power resilience and a phased build that matched real take-up curves. We worked alongside the operator's development, commercial and policy leads, and supported the conversations with the regulator and the utility.
Results
The revised case was approved by the investment committee, two anchor tenants signed pre-commitments ahead of ground-break, and the power allocation was secured under the phased plan. The campus is now in build, with phase-two expansion already in commercial discussion.
Future Applications
The same anchor-led entry model is being adapted for a second campus in a neighbouring market and for a connectivity-and-compute bundle aimed at regional financial-services customers.
