Cabling Africa: the great data race to serve the ‘last billion’

Johannesburg was built on a gold rush. But in the Isando Campus business park on the outskirts of SA’s financial centre, a much more precious substance is being piled up at an even more frenetic pace.

This is the home of Teraco, Africa’s biggest operator of independent data centres — the facilities that make the modern internet go round and house content for the likes of Google, Netflix and telecom companies...