Airtel Nigeria has announced that it is tripling its investment in network development in Nigeria and spending an additional $120 million to establish its data centre in the Eko Atlantic. And with a 38 megawatt information technology load, the data centre is expected to be the biggest in the nation once it is finished.
In response to the growing demand for cloud and artificial intelligence services, Airtel Nigeria said on Tuesday that it would construct the largest hyperscale data centre in the nation, a 38MW facility in Lagos.
The complex will be built on land that was reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean and is situated in Eko Atlantic City, one of the most expensive travel destinations in West Africa. First Bank of Nigeria, Dangote Group, and MTN Nigeria, which is moving its national offices there, are among the increasing number of corporate tenants attracted to the area.
The facility is made to serve small businesses, major corporations, and hyperscale cloud providers. The operator, which has more than 50 million subscribers, stated that significant development will start next year but did not reveal the investment value or completion date.
According to CEO Dinesh Balsingh, the Airtel data centre, which is located at Eko Atlantic on Lagos Island, would also increase the telco’s data network’s capacity and enhance its service.
“The data centre will be operated at scale as soon as it is launched. “It’s a huge investment,” Dinesh Balsingh, the CEO of Airtel Nigeria, stated at a press conference in Lagos. Data centres are essential to artificial intelligence and are not simply for the cloud. Nigeria is becoming ready for the future,” he continued.
The new initiative is a component of Airtel Africa’s larger infrastructure plan for important markets. Additionally, it contributes to an increasing number of investments in digital infrastructure in Nigeria, which has drawn international firms like Equinix through its purchase of MainOne, Africa Data Centres, Rack Centre, Kasi Cloud, and MTN.
The selection of Eko Atlantic was deliberate, according to Ogo Ofomata, Director of Airtel Business at Airtel Nigeria. For its security and access to dependable power, we are constructing it there. It’s about long-term infrastructure at scale, not simply for flex,” she stated.
According to the CEO, the facility is designed to host high-performance server racks up to 6 kW in size and can handle an IT load of 38 megawatts. Next-generation compute workloads, such as GPU-powered infrastructure necessary for AI applications, will be supported by the design.
In a roundtable with reporters in Lagos on Tuesday, Balsingh also mentioned that high-quality operator networks are nevertheless impacted when fibre cables are disrupted during road construction. The CEO of Airtel urged FG to take stronger action against vandalism while applauding the federal government’s digital policies.
“We’re designing for workloads requiring great performance. In addition to being hyperscale-ready, the hub will be customised to satisfy the demands of small and local enterprises, she stated.
The market for data centres in Nigeria is growing quickly; industry projections indicate that the total capacity would increase from roughly 136.7 megawatts in 2025 to 279.4 megawatts by 2030.
By the end of the decade, analysts predict the sector will be worth $671 million, making Nigeria the continent’s second-largest data centre market, behind South Africa.
In the meantime, Airtel has introduced a software platform that is AI-powered and ready for the future. This platform will assist telcos worldwide in simplifying their operations, concentrating on the customer, and enhancing customer satisfaction, reducing attrition, and increasing ARPU.
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