The Accounting & Audit Board of Ethiopia (AABE) invested five million Birr to build a data centre that will store information on companies that report to the 12-member Board. The new data centre is located at AABE headquarters in Sidist Kilo, and its goals are to store and transfer information smoothly, according to Abebe Shiferaw, communications director for the Board.

The centre was developed by a local IT company, InteraCom IT Solutions, which was established in 2005 and engages in developing IT infrastructure. The company operates with 25 employees and has worked on data centres and network infrastructure for the Agricultural Transformation Agency, Addis Abeba University, Ambo Mineral Water S.C. and Ethiopian Insurance Corporation.

The project was launched in July 2018 and was expected to go fully operational after one month.

InteraCom, which operates with 25 employees, built the data centre at the headquarters of the AABE.

The new centre, which will store and distribute all the data on the internet, has three storage servers, each with storage capacities of 6.6 terabits of data. It has switches to connect users to the servers and storage. Distributors, an air conditioning system and uninterrupted power supply systems are all new features of the project.

A total of 18,000 companies including share companies, state-owned enterprises, private limited companies and small and micro enterprises report to the board, which was formed by a 2014 parliamentary legislation as part of a financial proclamation.

The board has been storing data and reports of companies in hard copies and in an old data centre located at the Ministry of Science & Innovation.

"Most of our rooms are filled with hard copies," said Abebe. "The old data centre could not store the external files as it is only used for in-house purposes."