The financing includes loans of $10 million and ZAR 200 million (about USD$11) from IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and $20 million from Proparco, a development finance institution and subsidiary of the Agence Française de Développement Group.

WIOCC expects to sign an additional $10 million loan for its expansion in Nigeria with RMB in the next few weeks.

With the funding, WIOCC Group will expand its core and edge data centres in the DRC, Nigeria, and South Africa to meet growing demand for colocation and other data centre services.

It will also grow its fibre networks, helping bridge the digital divide, and fostering economic growth across Africa.

The financing is structured as a sustainability-linked debt, with pricing linked to WIOCC’s commitment to improve the energy efficiency of its data centres and obtain EDGE green building certification for them. EDGE, an innovation of IFC, makes it easy to design and certify resource-efficient and zero carbon buildings.

“We are excited to conclude this next stage of our capital raise, which will enable significant expansion, adding further capacity to our open-access data centre operation and extending open-access hyperscale national, international, and metro connectivity across our key markets in Nigeria, southern Africa, the DRC and Greater East and Central Africa,” said Chris Wood, CEO of WIOCC Group. “Our policy of continual investment in infrastructure to create Africa’s first, truly open-access interconnected digital ecosystem means ongoing investment for growth, ensuring readiness to meet the future demands of our clients’ customers throughout Africa.”

“The Agence Française de Développement Group have been supporting WIOCC since its inception back in 2007,” said Ariane Ducreux, head of Energy, Digital and Infrastructure at PROPARCO.

“We are very proud to pursue this long-term partnership by supporting the expansion of the Open Access Data Centres’ activities in Nigeria, South Africa, DRC and beyond. Truly neutral and open-access data centres are the cornerstone of a diversified digital ecosystem. Local data storage and processing capacity are also vital for the resilience of Africa’s digital network, as recent outages have demonstrated. The sustainability-linked structure of this new financing, along with technical assistance support, also aims to incentivize the rollout of energy and water efficient data centres, while adapting implementations to the specs of each site environment,” Ducreux said.

“Our long-standing partnership with WIOCC of more than 15 years demonstrates IFC’s commitment to increasing affordable and reliable digital connectivity in Africa through shared infrastructure. This new debt facility will help WIOCC fulfil its ambition to establish an integrated, open-access, core-to-edge cloud ecosystem throughout the African continent, which is critical to bridge the digital divide,” said Bertrand de la Borde, IFC Global Industry Director of infrastructure.

“RMB is thrilled to be a Strategic Banking Partner to WIOCC. Digital Infrastructure is one of our core sectors of expertise as a Bank.  As such, we are excited at the opportunity to support this deal and remain committed to partnering with WIOCC on its growth journey across the continent,” said Chidi Iwuchukwu, head of Investment Banking, Broader Africa – RMB.

Since its inception in 2007, WIOCC has been investing in Africa’s digital backbone, delivering open-access infrastructure to meet the growing demand for reliable connectivity solutions throughout the continent.

As WIOCC Group continues to transform digital Africa, this latest capital raise signifies a major milestone in its journey towards building a more connected Africa, fostering long-term partnerships and sustainability.

The loans, broken down into R2 billion ($176 million), a R800 million ($47 million) sustainability-linked loan and a R700 million ($41.7 million) green loan, were received from Standard Bank and RMB respectively, for investment in environmental projects.

Shoprite will leverage the loan for its expansion by investing in:

• Renewable energy and the increase of energy from renewable resources as a percentage of total electricity consumption 
• Recycling cardboard and plastic
• Sustainable packaging, including reusable, recyclable and compostable packaging, containing recycled material and
• Energy efficiency, including LED lighting, and a monitoring system for refrigeration to reduce energy consumption and waste

The Group will also utilize the loan to expand its existing sustainability investment. In the previous financial year, Shoprite affirms to have:

• Reduced carbon emission intensity by 3.3% and water use intensity by 7.5%
• Increased the installed capacity of its solar photovoltaic (PV) systems by 82% 
• Reduced electricity consumption by 150 million kWh through its LED lamp replacement project since inception
• Recycled 46 102tons of cardboard from stores and distribution centres and diverted 10,241 tons of plastic waste from landfills and 
• Paid R2.2 million in rebates to customers for reusing their plastic bags since inception

Sanjeev Raghubir, Shoprite Group’s Sustainability Manager said: “The loans enable us to continue on the road to reduce our environmental footprint by using more renewable energy and sustainable packaging and recycling more waste. These environmental programmes are key in our fight against climate change, and we are able to increase the pace and intensity of our actions with these loans.”

He further noted that the Group’s record to date has provided funders with demonstrable evidence of the nature and scale of its sustainability projects as well as ambitions, and enabled the retailer to access a preferential cost of funding.

“The loans allow us to continue to make a sustainable, positive environmental impact and improve our operational efficiencies which in turn result in additional ongoing savings that we can pass on to our customers.”