Microsoft announced the construction of its first data center in Africa. Thanks to this initiative, the company expects to gain advantages over its competitors in the local cloud computing market.

According to the statement made by Microsoft on Thursday, May 18, the company will open two data centers in South Africa - in Johannesburg and Cape Town. While cloud services Azure are provided to African users from European data centers, located, in particular, in Ireland and the Netherlands, notes Bloomberg.

"We are inspired by the growing demand for cloud services in Africa and the ability of the clouds to catalyze new economic opportunities," said Microsoft Executive Vice President for Cloud and Enterprise Technologies Scott Guthrie,.

According to him, the provision of cloud services in Africa from servers located in the region will stimulate the development of entrepreneurship and fuel business. The company plans to distribute Azure services and Office 365 applications in South Africa, starting in 2018. Microsoft already has several African customers using cloud solutions of the software giant. Among them - one of the largest banks in the region - Standard Bank Group.

The African project has become part of Microsoft's massive strategy to develop the computing infrastructure in the world. In total this strategy covers 40 regions.