Diaspora-Owned IT Firm RedFox Opens First Modular Data Center in ICT Park

RedFox Solutions Group, a Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) provider, has inaugurated its first data center in Ethiopia. Known as Redfox Modular Data Center 1 (RFETH-MDC01), the center is erected in the ICT Park.

The inauguration event took place today, September 19, 2022, at Hyatt Regency,  Addis Ababa, and was attended by prominent local figures.

RedFox partnered with Rittal LTD, a German systems provider, for the construction of its data center which lies on 4,000 sqm of land. Construction began in March 2021.

“Redfox builds its data centers in phases; our first modular data center, which is now operational, followed by our build-to-suite server farm, are both located at the ICT Park. The locations of our disaster recovery sites in Ethiopia and the next three additional modular data centers will be announced by the end of this fiscal year,” said Redfox Solutions Group CEO Adane Kassaye.

RedFox offers four main products: Edge Presence, Cloud, Modular Data Center, and Build to Suite. The firm also specializes in offering off-premise customized infrastructure services, secure certified designs, and architectures for institutions that have compliance requirements for in-house requirements. The Center will also provide collocation services.

“We were passionate about coming to Ethiopia. Today’s launch took a lot of preparation. We believe in and are committed to creating opportunities, ” added Adane.

RedFox was founded by ten Ethiopian-Diaspora professionals with years of experience in the areas of telecom and information technology. The firm has led numerous technology deployments in different business sectors to empower the use of comprehensive data center solutions.

ArifPay and Orbit Health are some of the local companies that have signed an MOU with RedFox to utilize their service.

“We are excited to move the digital health mission and effort in Ethiopia in partnership with RedFox,” tweeted founder and CEO of OrbitHealth, CEO, Pazion Cherinet.

“We are glad Redfox accepted Ethiopia’s call in its digital economy quest. RedFox is an enabler organization that can create the competence and necessary infrastructure for many startups to start operations and scale quickly,” said Sandokan Debebe, CEO of Ethiopia Industrial Parks Development Corporation.

RedFox is one of four companies that were granted land in the ICT Park in 2020 to construct data centers.

In Ethiopia, the embracing of data centers, as well as local cloud services, is at an early stage. However, in recent years, Ethiopia’s capital is seeing a surge in data center developments.

The Digital Ethiopia 20252 strategy considers “enabling the adoption of cloud solutions and data centers” a key priority for the nation’s digital economy.

The government’s institutional support for the sector was further demonstrated when Ethiopia’s new investment incentive regulation extended special rights for data centers and cloud services businesses, making them eligible for income tax and duty incentives.

Multiple cloud service providers have recently invested in the sector, understanding the current cloud market reality and its potential.

Since 2018, over 14 companies have acquired investment licenses to engage in data center and cloud services. Wingu.Africa, Raxio Group, and ScutiX are also active in the ICT Park.

Raxio Ethiopia will open its Tier III-ready carrier-neutral data center at the beginning of 2023. Wingu has already started operations.