Grace Ashiru
Gabon plans to formally launch its first domestically located data center on June 30, 2026, at the Nkok Special Economic Zone near Libreville. The announcement followed a meeting between Digital Economy Minister Mark-Alexandre Doumba and the team behind the project. The facility, built by Gabonese operator ST Digital, is designed to meet international Tier III standards — meaning it has redundant power and cooling systems for high reliability — and will offer colocation, cloud, and AI-ready hosting services to government bodies, businesses, and individuals.
The center is meant to reduce Gabon’s reliance on data infrastructure hosted abroad, a common issue across the continent where much public and private data still sits on foreign servers. ST Digital, which has already built similar Tier-certified facilities in Cameroon, says the project marks a milestone for the country’s digital sovereignty and is part of a broader push under Gabon’s digital transformation roadmap. The launch comes alongside an earlier national initiative — backed by the Gabonese government, ANINF, and partners including Cisco, Cybastion, and Citibank — that combines infrastructure development with free digital skills training for 1,000 young Gabonese.
