DATA CENTRE SECURITY
INSIGHTS FROM LINX CTO RICHARD PETRIE
Data Centre Magazine spoke with Richard as part of its June 2025 edition, where he explained the LINX Nairobi developments.
LINX Nairobi in particular is one of the IX’ s more recent developments. As an interconnection hub for East Africa, the organisation is expanding its presence at PAIX Data Centres in Nairobi to prepare to expand its network.
“ We are definitely adapting our infrastructure to try and attract new types of members and new types of customers to LINX both as a push and a pull,”
Richard told us.“ We see the demand coming to us and people asking for it and we’ re also seeing opportunities in certain markets for us to build out.“ When we build our infrastructure, we’ ve been building layer two internet connectivity services for more than 30 years. Allowing us to adapt our network to provide these additional type services hasn’ t been difficult – because we’ re trusted and we’ ve got a secure platform, it’ s a natural evolution for us.”
LINX Accra: Pushing ahead with interconnectivity Within Africa, LINX has found success. Within Kenya specifically, the success of LINX Nairobi has led the organisation to build an additional interconnection point in Mombasa, which Jennifer says has been easier given that an entity already exists in Kenya.
LINX Accra is expected to go live in July 2025 and Jennifer is excited to continue building a connectivity community there.
“ The community aspect of working in these countries, alongside our data centre partners, is very unique in Africa,” she says.
Announced in July 2025, LINX expanded its Digital Realty partnership, selecting the data centre giant as a new IXP access point in Ghana as they welcomed it to LINX Accra.
At the time of writing, Digital Realty is in the final stages of its new facility in Accra, ACR2 – a state-of-the-art data centre strategically located within close proximity to several submarine landing cable stations in the city.
“ Digital Realty is a strategic global partner for us and we work with them in nearly all of our locations,” Jennifer says.“ For them to build in Ghana is a real indication that the market is going to be big, otherwise you don’ t get those builds.
“ Ghana is a long-term prospect for us so by including Digital Realty, we’ re doing what we do really well, which is linking data centres.”
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