Stellarix, the data centre company owned by Malagasy billionaire Hassanein Hiridjee’s Axian Group, is expanding its Senegal facility to meet rising demand for cloud computing and AI services. The expansion will boost hosting capacity for businesses and critical workloads while supporting Senegal’s push toward sovereign cloud services — though the company hasn’t disclosed the exact capacity added or investment figure. French engineering firm Snef, along with SERTEM Groupe and Kent Data Centres, contributed to the buildout.
Stellarix runs carrier-neutral, Tier III-certified data centres offering colocation and interconnection services, with facilities operating or under development in Senegal, Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, and Madagascar. Hiridjee has pointed out that most of the continent still lacks adequate data centre capacity — by his own estimate, roughly 35 African countries still need to be addressed.
The Senegal move fits into a much bigger Axian buildout in the country. Axian Telecom runs mobile and broadband there under its Yas brand, backed by up to €170 million (about $184 million) from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to extend mobile and fibre networks in Senegal and Kenya. On the energy side, Axian Energy just reached financial close on the NEA Kolda project — a 60-megawatt solar farm paired with 72 megawatt-hours of battery storage, now the largest solar-plus-storage facility in West Africa. That combination matters: data centres need both reliable power and fast fibre, and Axian now controls all three pieces in Senegal.
The expansion is part of a roughly $730 million funding push Hiridjee has drawn from development finance institutions since 2025, including a multi-year Proparco agreement covering telecoms, data centres, solar generation, mini-grids, and EV charging. Axian Telecom now operates across 11 African markets with around 3,500 towers, while Axian Energy — currently at 350MW of installed renewable capacity — is targeting 2 gigawatts by 2030.