Airtel Nigeria said on Tuesday it will build a 38MW hyperscale data centre in Lagos, billed as the country’s largest, to meet surging demand for cloud and AI services.
The facility will be located in Eko Atlantic City, one of West Africa’s costliest destinations, developed on reclaimed land from the Atlantic Ocean. The area has drawn a growing number of corporate tenants, including First Bank of Nigeria, Dangote Group and MTN Nigeria, which is relocating its national headquarters there.
The facility is designed to cater to hyperscale cloud providers, large enterprises and small businesses. The operator with over 50 million subscribers did not disclose the investment value or completion timeline but said serious development will begin next year.
“The moment we launch the data centre, we will run it at scale. It’s a massive investment,” Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Nigeria, Dinesh Balsingh, said during a media session in Lagos. “Data centres are not just for cloud; they are foundational to AI. We’re preparing Nigeria for what’s next”, he added.
The new project forms part of Airtel Africa’s broader infrastructure strategy across key markets. It also adds to a growing wave of digital infrastructure investments in Nigeria, which has attracted global players such as Equinix via its acquisition of MainOne, as well as Africa Data Centres, Rack Centre, Kasi Cloud, and MTN.
The Director of Airtel Business at Airtel Nigeria, Ogo Ofomata, said the choice of Eko Atlantic was strategic. “We are building it there for its security and access to reliable power. It’s not just for flex; it’s about long-term infrastructure at scale”, she said.
The executive said the facility is being engineered to deliver an IT load of 38 megawatts, with support for high-performance server racks of up to 6 kilowatts. The design will accommodate next-generation compute workloads, including GPU-powered infrastructure essential for artificial intelligence applications.
“We’re building for high-performance workloads. The centre will be hyperscale-ready but also tailored to meet the needs of SMEs and local businesses”, she said.
Nigeria’s data centre market is expanding rapidly, with total capacity expected to rise from about 136.7 megawatts in 2025 to 279.4 megawatts by 2030, according to industry estimates.
Analysts project the sector’s value will reach $671m by the end of the decade, positioning Nigeria as the second-largest data centre market in Africa after South Africa.
