LMohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) announced, in February 2021, the inauguration of its new data center housing the most powerful “Supercomputer” in Africa, called African Supercomputing Center which constitutes a state-of-the-art infrastructure likely to strengthen the links between the world of research and that of industry.
“With the inauguration of this cutting-edge computing platform, UM6P is strengthening its presence in the territory by offering technological responses to contribute to digital sovereignty, securing and processing the data used”, indicates UM6P in a communicated.
This data center, located in the city of Benguerir, which is being developed in partnership with the University of Cambridge, notably houses a supercomputer with a capacity of 3.15 petaflops at three million billion operations per second. This suggests for Morocco and more broadly for the African Continent the opportunity to break through in terms of scientific research and innovation in all areas, in particular:
• Modeling of the genome of African plants to be protected
• Modeling of the genome of the microbiome which covers all the micro-organisms living on the surface and inside the soil with a view to a better understanding of fertility
• Modeling satellite data for better agricultural land management
• The modeling of meteorological data for a better integration of renewable energies in the network…
With this Data Center, of world-class installation, ensuring high security, maximum availability, high flexibility and optimal connectivity, the UM6P, faithful to its positioning of excellence on a national and continental scale, is at the service of the national digital ecosystem in order to help guarantee the digital sovereignty of the Kingdom and to develop new 100% Moroccan digital services.
Today, the data center is a powerful tool for economic sovereignty. A support which will have to widen the influence beyond the borders. Experts, politicians and economic players are convinced that Morocco has all the assets to play the role of a trusted data and cloud third party on an African scale.
Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya bring together most of the most important facilities than the rest of the other African countries. The great champion remains unquestionably the‘South Africa which, on its own, concentrates two thirds of the continent’s capacities, whose needs are estimated at 700 data centers to meet the strong demand.
A breakthrough in the implementation of Big Data solutions.
In order to be able to fully exploit the potential of big data while limiting the risks, it is essential to develop new approaches to be able to quickly collect, analyze and store large volumes of data. The solution is to combine HPC high-performance computing and big data analytics on a single platform.
In sectors such as pharmaceuticals, logistics, energy, finance and industry where knowledge from high performance computing is already applied to data analysis, companies are managing to push the limits of research and development. They are thus able to resolve questions that have remained unresolved until now.
Mr. Hicham El Habti, President of the UM6P shared the challenges of this platform “Beyond the scientific objective, our desire is above all to provide answers to industries, populations and territories. Big Data represents an invaluable source to shed light on how Morocco can meet the challenges that arise in an increasingly digital world,” reports the news site le360.
It is in this concordance of reflection around the potential contributions to the African continent as well as the implementation of new development models, in particular national artificial intelligence strategies and other strategies more focused on the digital transformation of certain African states.
Blog Article / by Adil BENKADDOUR / Master 2 Electronic Commerce, Unistra/Edge, Casablanca, Morocco