Data Platforms: Digital Rails for African Market Data

Digital rails for corridor markets

Every function the Exchange performs — admission, custody, clearing, settlement — produces records that must be retained, replicated and made available on demand for years. In the corridors we serve, that infrastructure has historically sat offshore, which made data residency a matter of negotiation rather than of design.

The data platform exists to reverse that. It develops and operates campuses inside the markets where members transact, so that the evidentiary base of the exchange is held under the same jurisdiction as the assets it describes.

Capacity built for member demand

The platform operates on several continents and supports contracted capacity well beyond a gigawatt, with a development pipeline larger still. Campuses are built to be customisable, so a member with a specific residency, latency or compliance requirement can be served without redesigning the site.

Two capabilities matter most to members. The first is scale delivered predictably, so that a corridor operator committing to a market knows when capacity will be available. The second is power: campuses are contracted against generation on the Exchange's own register, which keeps supply, cost and carbon position visible in the same place as everything else.

Why the Exchange operates it directly

An exchange that outsources its record-keeping infrastructure cannot make firm assurances about that record. Custody of evidence is the product; the facilities that hold it are not a back-office concern.

Operating the platform directly lets us hold physical security, access control, replication and retention to the same standard as the compliance obligations we impose on listed members. It also lets us extend that capability outward — members needing AI-ready infrastructure inside a corridor market can contract for it on the Exchange, under the same terms and with the same evidentiary treatment as any other listed asset.

Residency, retention and replication

Three commitments define what members actually buy. Residency: records stay in the jurisdiction they belong to. Retention: they remain available for the full period the member's regulator requires. Replication: they survive the loss of any single site.

Each is contracted explicitly and reported against. Where a member's obligations change — a new data protection regime, a longer retention period — the commitment is restated on the register rather than renegotiated privately.

The pipeline of development capacity exists to keep those commitments deliverable as the register grows. Capacity added ahead of demand is what prevents residency from quietly becoming a matter of best endeavours, which is the point at which the evidentiary value of the whole system begins to erode.