Cassava Technologies, through its businesses Africa Data Centres and Liquid C2, has secured a Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute Metro peering location designation for its Africa Data Centres JHB1 facility in Johannesburg, making it the first ExpressRoute Metro location in Africa.
The designation places Johannesburg alongside a select group of global technology hubs offering organisations access to a higher level of cloud resilience, redundancy, and security for mission-critical workloads.
What Azure ExpressRoute Metro Actually Means
The Cassava Technologies Microsoft Azure Africa milestone is built on a specific and consequential technical architecture.
Standard ExpressRoute provides a private connection between an organisation’s network and Microsoft cloud services, bypassing the public internet.
ExpressRoute Metro goes further: it routes a single connection through two separate peering locations within the same metropolitan area, creating built-in redundancy that protects against localised incidents at either site.
In Johannesburg, the two ExpressRoute Metro peering locations are Africa Data Centres’ JHB1 facility and Teraco’s JT1, both connecting to the South Africa North Azure region.
Cassava is the only provider with an on-net presence at both locations.
This position gives it a structurally unique capability to deliver the Metro service through a single managed provider relationship rather than requiring enterprises to coordinate across two separate infrastructure partners.
For enterprises running mission-critical applications on Azure, the difference between standard ExpressRoute and ExpressRoute Metro is the difference between private connectivity and genuinely resilient private connectivity.
A single-site failure no longer means a service outage.
Africa Data Centres JHB1 and the Microsoft Peering Significance
The Azure ExpressRoute Metro Johannesburg designation through Africa Data Centres and Microsoft peering marks the continent’s entry into an infrastructure tier that was previously available only in established global technology hubs.
Ziaad Suleman, Senior Vice President of Cassava Technologies South Africa and Botswana, described the designation as a defining moment for Africa Data Centres and for Africa’s digital infrastructure.
He pointed out to what it reflects about growing confidence in the continent’s ability to support the next generation of cloud and AI-driven services.
The One Cassava model that Suleman referenced is the strategic logic behind why the designation matters beyond the technical specification.
Africa Data Centres provides the physical infrastructure layer, JHB1 in this case, while Liquid C2, Cassava’s cloud and cybersecurity division, provides the managed service layer on top of it.
Combining both under one provider gives enterprise customers a single trusted relationship covering the full connectivity and security stack.
Liquid C2’s Secure CloudConnect: The Managed Service Layer
The cloud resilience South Africa 2026 announcement introduces Secure CloudConnect, Liquid C2’s fully managed service that combines resilient private cloud connectivity with integrated cybersecurity solutions, providing organisations with a secure path to Microsoft Azure.
For enterprise and regulated sector customers, the managed service dimension addresses a practical gap that the raw infrastructure capability alone does not.
It addresses the operational complexity of configuring, monitoring, and maintaining a dual-site ExpressRoute Metro connection without internal specialist expertise.
Secure CloudConnect packages the ExpressRoute Metro infrastructure into a service that reduces disruption risk, strengthens security posture, and simplifies the management of complex cloud environments while meeting the regulatory and governance expectations that financial services, healthcare, and government clients increasingly face.
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As regulators across Africa place greater emphasis on operational resilience, business continuity, risk management, and data protection, the managed service model directly addresses the compliance requirements that drive enterprise cloud infrastructure decisions.
Microsoft South Africa’s View on What This Unlocks
Vukani Mngxati, CEO of Microsoft South Africa, framed the Johannesburg ExpressRoute Metro designation in terms of South Africa’s positioning in the global AI economy.
South Africa is not waiting for the AI era, he noted, it is helping to shape it, and that ambition rests on digital infrastructure the country can trust.
His follow-on point was direct: when businesses can build on trusted, resilient foundations, they can move faster, compete on the global stage, and turn South Africa’s digital ambition into real economic impact.
That framing matters because it connects infrastructure investment to economic outcome rather than treating the designation as a technical milestone in isolation.
AI workloads require high-availability cloud connectivity. Financial services platforms require regulatory-grade resilience. Healthcare systems require uptime standards that a single-site connection cannot guarantee.
ExpressRoute Metro in Johannesburg makes those workloads viable in Africa at the same infrastructure standard available in the global hubs where enterprises have historically needed to locate them.
What the Designation Means for Africa’s Digital Infrastructure
The broader significance of Africa Data Centres’ JHB1 becoming a Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute Metro peering location is what it signals about the trajectory of Africa’s digital infrastructure investment.
Cassava Technologies is headquartered in the UK and operates across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States, serving customers in 94 countries through business units that include Cassava AI, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Liquid C2, Africa Data Centres, and Sasai Fintech.
The designation confirms that Johannesburg’s data centre ecosystem has reached the technical and operational maturity required to qualify as a global-tier peering location.
For enterprises evaluating where to locate workloads that require Azure-grade private connectivity with built-in redundancy, the answer now includes Johannesburg in a way it did not before.
That changes the infrastructure calculus for businesses considering Africa as a cloud deployment location rather than a market served from infrastructure elsewhere.
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