Airtel Nigeria is making a double play to strengthen its position in the country’s telecom and technology market, announcing plans to build Nigeria’s largest data centre while also working to make 5G smartphones more affordable for consumers.
At a media briefing earlier this week, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Dinesh Balsingh, and Director of Airtel Business, Ogo Ofomata, revealed that a 38-megawatt hyperscale data centre will be constructed at Eko Atlantic, Lagos. The facility’s capacity will dwarf MTN’s $235 million Sifiso Dabengwa Data Centre, launched in July with an initial IT load of 4.5 MW, expandable to 9 MW.
“We don’t want to start small,” Ofomata said. “This will be Nigeria’s largest data centre, built at hyperscale level to meet the demands of modern infrastructure.”
Built to meet global hyperscale cloud standards, Airtel’s facility is designed to attract major players, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. It will also start with six kilowatts of rack power, four times the industry norm, to support intensive workloads including artificial intelligence. Balsingh said the site is already receiving GPU server shipments, underscoring its AI-first design.
Alongside its data centre ambitions, Airtel is targeting wider adoption of its expanding 5G network by tackling one of the biggest barriers to entry, the cost of compatible devices.
“5G is not only about telecom infrastructure,” Balsingh told reporters. “It’s an ecosystem where devices and networks must come together. Rolling out the network is important, but it’s just as crucial to ensure that consumers have access to 5G-enabled phones.”
While Airtel has achieved nearly 100% 4G coverage and is accelerating 5G rollouts in major cities, the company acknowledges that without affordable smartphones, uptake will be limited. To address this, it is working with device manufacturers on strategies to lower production costs, re-engineer components and potentially offer bundled packages or incentives through partnerships with original equipment manufacturers.
The dual strategy of building an AI-ready hyperscale data centre and pushing for affordable 5G devices positions Airtel in direct competition with MTN on two fronts, which are enterprise cloud hosting and consumer mobile internet. MTN has already launched an accelerator to grow its cloud ecosystem, but analysts say Airtel’s combined infrastructure and consumer approach could reshape Nigeria’s tech landscape.
Although Airtel has yet to announce a launch date for the data centre or a timeline for mass 5G device adoption, Balsingh says Nigerians should expect “a rapid pace of deployment” in both areas over the coming months.
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