After years in which state institutions were repeatedly targeted by cyberattacks, Macedonia finally has a chosen site for its own national data centre. It will be built near the Skopje 1 and 2 technological-industrial development zones - on a plot with no fertile soil, close to a motorway and a fibre line, with enough room to add a photovoltaic plant for its own power supply should anyone ever decide to.

The total investment is fixed at 20 million euros: 70 percent for the building itself, 30 percent for the equipment. Thirty percent of the financing comes as a grant component.

The World Bank dropped out, and that is information in itself

Digital Transformation Minister Stefan Andonovski confirmed that the government is still looking for an international financier. Talks were held with the World Bank, but - according to him - it will not be able to finance the project because of misalignment with European Union requirements. Negotiations are now moving towards institutions compatible with the EU Growth Plan, such as the Council of Europe Development Bank.

That is a sentence worth reading twice. The project has been chosen, the site has been chosen, the budget is fixed - and the financier still is not. The order of operations here is rarely reversed, but it is worth remembering in two years' time when somebody asks why things are late.

Two and a half years, and hardware from 2027

From the start of construction to entry into service, two to two and a half years are foreseen. The equipment would be procured in 2027-2028, in the hope that hardware prices will have stagnated or fallen by then. The building is planned to be modular so it can be upgraded - including for artificial intelligence workloads.

At present the state has one backup data centre in Prilep, under the Interior Ministry. Everything else is scattered across institutions, server rooms and contracts nobody outside them ever sees. That is precisely why every cyberattack in recent years ended with the same sentence: "the extent of the damage is being established."

Centralisation is a risk too, not just a solution

Once it is built, state institutions will begin migrating their data to the new infrastructure. The expectation is that this will raise cybersecurity. It probably will - but centralisation has another side: when everything sits in one place, the target is also one place.

Will there be a budget for the people who maintain it? Will there be a plan for what happens if that centre goes down too? The two and a half years ahead are enough time to answer those questions. The question is whether anyone will ask them before the ribbon gets cut.