JOHANNESBURG, (Reuters) – The World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation has partnered up with South Africa’s Liquid Intelligent Technologies in order to increase data center capacity and lay fibre-optic cables across the continent. This was announced by the two groups in a joint statement issued Monday.

According to the partners, the linkup with Liquid Intelligent Technologies (formerly Liquid Telecom) aims to improve digital connectivity in Africa as well as to help the region’s expanding digital ecosystem.

Investment in data centers demonstrates the growing demand for cloud services, even in the most remote corners of Africa.

Amazon (NASDAQ) and Microsoft (NASDAQ) have already begun to compete with Chinese telecom giant Huawei for massive data centers on continent. As demand rises for cloud connectivity, companies can save enormous costs renting storage space rather than creating their servers.

According to the statement, IFC’s Liquid equity and debt investments totaling approximately $250 Million have supported the company in growing its super-scale capacity for data centres in Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria through Africa Data Centres subsidiary.

According to them, “As Africa’s populations grows rapidly and becomes more urbanized data consumption will also grow strong. With this growth comes the demand for local secure data hosting.”

Additionally, the investments will support Liquid’s continued rollout of its fibre broadband network. This currently spans more than 100,000 kms across sub-Saharan Africa.

Broadband Commission on Sustainable Development says sub-Saharan Africa requires $100 billion of investment in order to have affordable high-quality broadband connectivity by 2030. To achieve this, it would require at least 250,000 km of fibre-optic lines.

IFC’s investment in Liquid comes after its bond placement at Euronext Dublin in Liquid in February 2021. It raised $620million.

This story has been rewritten to clarify that IFC is part “World Bank Group”, in the headline and first paragraph.