MTN Attracts Europe, US Partners On AI Data Centres

The largest and biggest telecom and wireless provider in Africa, MTN Group, is in an advanced discussion and negotiations with partners in the US and European companies to build data centres throughout the continent that will support artificial intelligence (AI) services.

The CEO Ralph Mupita says the move is part of the company’s plan to close Africa’s huge AI infrastructure gap and open up new revenue sources.

The Johannesburg-based business is looking for partners to co-invest and scale facilities, including hyperscalers like Microsoft, and will partially finance the implementation. MTN anticipates completing collaborations this year and has started construction on a $240 million data centre in Nigeria.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Mupita said that MTN aim at collaborating with international partners which will include co-investors, AI infrastructure companies, and hyperscalers like Microsoft, to directly finance a portion of the investment for the AI data centre build-out.

The objective is to build infrastructure, hire tenants that require AI processing power, and lease access to African governments and companies.

According to Mupita, he says that the MTN team are now shortlisting partners who can assist in scaling and are in the commercial negotiation stage. In the interview, Mupita told Bloomberg, “We want to wrap up these collaborations this year.”

According to MTN and with Genova, its AI data centre division, will be crucial to the company’s larger strategy to monetise infrastructure, make platforms accessible to outside parties, and spur new income development.

In the 16 African markets where MTN operates, prospective partners would follow, especially in areas where there is a growing need for AI services.

However, a consistent supply of electricity continues to be a significant obstacle. In markets with brittle energy infrastructure, MTN is looking at every option to secure reliable power sources for its planned data centres, according to Mupita.

As part of a larger continent-wide goal to transform its operations using responsible AI technology, MTN Group recently announced that it has started implementing AI solutions to optimise network traffic and improve service delivery in Nigeria under the Genova strategy.

The MTN Genova transformation initiative, according to the Group, is now operating AI at scale across its processes.

MTN also claims that the deployment in Nigeria is a component of a number of focused AI use cases in important sectors, such as fibre cut sensing in Côte d’Ivoire, dynamic energy management in Benin, and intelligent fuel consumption management for data centres in South Africa.

In the meantime, MTN Nigeria opened what it called the largest Tier III data facility in West Africa and among the biggest in Africa in July of this year.

The nine megawatt facility, known as the Sifiso Dabengwa Data Centre, is outfitted with cloud architecture that the telco asserts competes with products from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

The lack of AI infrastructure in Africa where Africa is home to less than 1% of the world’s AI data centre capacity, despite having the youngest and fastest-growing population in the world.

The majority of the continent’s processing power is currently based in South Africa, where cloud services are offered by hyperscalers including Microsoft, Alibaba, and Amazon.

The area is also being occupied by other gamers. While Indian billionaire Sunil Mittal intends to extend AI infrastructure in Nigeria through Airtel Africa and Nxtra, Microsoft and Abu Dhabi’s G42 recently unveiled a geothermal-powered data centre in Kenya.

Additionally, last month, Airtel Africa and Xtelify sealed a multi-year, multi-million dollar agreement to implement a state-of-the-art, AI-powered software platform that will streamline telecom operations and enhance customer satisfaction throughout its 14 African markets.

In order to provide its 150,000 field agents with comprehensive market insights that facilitate micro-targeted initiatives, Airtel Africa will implement the Xtelify Data Engine and Xtelify Work platforms as part of the agreement.