By 
Airtel Africa says it will be building one of the continent’s largest data centres in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital of over 23 million people and currently housing more than four major data centres.
“Our Group CEO, Dr. Segun Ogunsanya recently met Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. During the meeting, Dr. Ogunsanya announced plans by Airtel Africa to build one of the continent’s largest data centers in Lagos,” the telco announced recently on LinkedIn.
RELATED: Sunil Taldar to take over as CEO of Airtel Africa as Ogunsanya retires
Adding: “This facility will serve the rapidly growing digital economy in Africa by providing open, trusted, and sustainable data centre capacity to enterprises, startups, SMEs and governments.
“Through Nxtra by Airtel, our recently launched data center business, we intend to build the largest network of high-capacity data centres, strategically located in major cities across our footprint, to complement our existing edge sites.
“According to Dr Ogunsanya, the data centers will unlock opportunities for enterprises operating in Africa through faster access to digital services and lower costs of managing data.”
Ogunsanya told newsmen after the meeting with President Tinubu in Abuja that though the company operations is being impacted on negatively by Nigeria’s foreign exchange difficulties, it is optimistic that the business climate will improve.
His words: “We had massive issues with liquidity FX we still have some issues with FX liquidity, but at least slightly more predictable than it was a couple of months ago. It makes it easier for us to do better planning. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we can see light at the end of the tunnel.”
Adding: “We’re always expanding our business we always invest in the country. We’re going to set up a new data centre in the country. “We have already bought the land and we will be breaking ground very soon. It is going to be one of the largest data centres in Africa that we’re going to put in Nigeria.”
Airtel Africa currently has over 150m customer base across Africa with Nigeria as its leading market. with expanded telecom services
Last year, Airtel announced plans for Nxtra Data Centres to consolidate its presence on the continent. Nxtra, jointly owned by Indian telco Airtel and Carlyle, plans to establish five hyperscale data centres in Africa beginning with Lagos.
