Until now, Gabon has hadthree basic data centres. None offer colocation, cloud hosting, or remote services. On June 30, that changes.Â
ST Digital, a Gabonese operator that has already builtTier III-certified facilities in Cameroon, will inaugurate the country’sfirst national data centre at the Nkok Special Economic Zone (SEZ) near Libreville. The facility meets international Tier III standards—meaning redundant power and cooling systems for high availability—and will offer colocation, cloud computing, and AI-ready hosting to government institutions, businesses, and individuals.
The timing is deliberate. Yesterday 5, we reported that Gabon’s XAF 82 billion ($133 million) digital economy budget for 2026 is part of the government’s broader push to reduce dependence on foreign digital infrastructure. The data centre is the most concrete deliverable in that strategy; it has a date, a location, a named builder, and a certification that means something.
What’s new? Most of Gabon’s public- and private-sector data currently sits on servers in Europe or South Africa, a common situation across francophone Central Africa, where local digital infrastructure has historically been thin. Local hosting offers lower latency, greater control over sensitive government data, and reduced costs on international data transfers. ST Digital’s Director General, Laïka Mba, has put it plainly: this is Gabon’s first sovereign data hosting tool.
Central Africa is the continent’s most digitally underserved region. A Tier III data centre in Libreville does not close that gap on its own, but it gives Gabon something to build on, and gives the region a proof of concept that sovereign digital infrastructure is achievable without waiting for a large foreign investor to show up first.