India’s RailTel announces Ethiopian data centre deal

Details: Vaughan O'Grady; Category: Data Centres & Networks; 13 January 2026; 7950 views

RailTel Corporation of India has announced plans to establish a greenfield data centre for Ethiopia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to Indian news reports, the data centre will be housed within the existing building of the Ministry in Addis Ababa.

RailTel is a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU: a government-owned establishment) under India’s Ministry of Railways, and one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure and ICT solutions and services providers in the country. It owns a pan-India optic fibre network covering several towns and cities and rural areas of the country.

So far RailTel has not offered details about the facility's size or IT capacity, but the deal does have an approximate value of US$2.2 million.

The project is scheduled to be completed within one year, followed by three years of comprehensive operation and maintenance (O&M) support after the facility goes live.

This project also supports Digital Ethiopia 2030, a five-year national strategy (following on from Digital Ethiopia 2025) to accelerate digital transformation, focusing on expanding digital infrastructure, enhancing connectivity, strengthening cybersecurity, supporting innovation, digitising public services and promoting financial inclusion.

Calling the contract a major milestone in its international expansion journey, RailTel says that it secured the project with the help of the Indian government’s Ministry of External Affairs.

In fact, according to the Data Centre Dynamics website, RailTel is actively seeking to expand internationally, specifically looking at opportunities in the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, South America, South-East Asia and Australia.

It has, of course, already been involved in a number of digital infrastructure initiatives in India, notably a collaborative effort to develop data centre projects announced in April last year.