Senegal’s President Macky Sall will inaugurate the country’s first sovereign data center on Tuesday, June 22, as part of his government’s efforts to make the West African nation a leader in digital technologies.
The Diamniadio Data Center will enable the government spread out high speed internet access throughout the country’s territory but also to meet, at affordable costs, the requests of the government and the private sector for hosting and operation of platforms and computer data.
Plans for the data center were laid out during the president’s traditional address to the nation in April, in which Sall touted the benefits of the project in boosting the digital sovereignty of Senegal.
For the first time, the country will have its own digital data storage structure that will also facilitate the dematerialization of procedures, for the rapid and transparent delivery of administrative services and documents, including civil registration documents.
The government also believes that the state owned project is a step towards the realization of Digital Senegal 2025 Strategy that calls for the dematerialization of administrative procedures, improvement of productivity with reduced costs and reduction of delays in transactions and administrative operations.
The data center will also promote the emergence in the digital economy of more than 4,600 companies, and the generation of more than 15,700 jobs, including 720 direct.
It also enables the government to strengthen economic governance, increase the performance of companies, improve citizens’ access to information and promote the emergence of transparent management, effective and efficient in results-based public administration.
Over the last decade, Senegal has been part of a dynamic to undertake the digitization of major registers (moral persons, legal persons, and geo-referenced heritage) and the implementation of iconic digital projects (biometric repository of natural persons, national digital cadastre, national address plan), to give a real impetus to the integral dematerialization of public administration.
It has also witnessed a flurry of international actors that have set up privately run data centers in the country.
