Zimbabwean billionaire, Strive Masiyiwa is heading back to Nigeria to build a 10Megawatts (MW) data centre in Lagos, the commercial city that also hosted his company Econet when it launched in the most populated country in Africa. The data centre is expected to cost about $100 million when completed.
The 10MW data centre is to be built by Africa Data Centres (ADC) a carrier-neutral data centre company in the Liquid Intelligent Technologies group which is owned by Strive Masiyiwa.
In a progress update, ADC said the data centre is progressing and “will form Africa Data Centres’ West African hub” which aligns with the company’s regional expansion strategy.
The mobile economy may be booming in Nigeria in terms of the number of internet users at about 97 million unique users according to data from Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), the country is ranked 77 on Cloudscene based on data centre density. There are 5 colocation data centres, about 53 cloud service providers, and 5 network fabrics in Nigeria. All five data centres are located in Lagos.
Read Also: How to buy bitcoin in Nigerian naira safely
The COVID-19 pandemic however has not only increased data traffic, but there has also been a growing appetite for cloud services by businesses that have been impacted by the new realities brought about by the pandemic.
It is expected that over 70 percent of organisation operating in Africa will shift to the cloud region by 2025. Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, and Morocco are at the forefront of improving the digital economy.
“In response to demand generated by hyperscalers, key cloud operators, and multinational enterprises already making use of our data centres, we have purchased the Samrand facility in South Africa and our key build in Midrand is underway. These same clients, who have trusted us with their expansions into Kenya and other African territories, have expressed their interest in bringing digitisation at scale to West Africa. Our leadership and best practice in data centre operations have made us the obvious choice in their expansion strategies,” Stephane Duproz, CEO of Africa Data Centres said.
When the 10MW data centre was first announced in December 2020, Liquid Telecom CEO, Mohamed Abdel Bassit said it was going to be the biggest data centre outside of South Africa.
“This is our largest investment in Nigeria since the mobile industry started,” Masiyiwa said in a Facebook post. “Once again, I’m kicking off a new revolution in the next phase of technology. What is important is not the data centres but the technologies that will be unleashed in Nigeria because of this infrastructure. That is the big deal here.”
The company has now gone ahead to appoint a Nigerian as the CEO of the new data centre. Wole Abu, the incoming CEO joined Liquid Telecom and Africa Data Centre in Nigeria from Pan African Towers, and before that Airtel Nigeria where he was VP of sales.
Strive Masiyiwa’s first adventure in Nigeria was also in the telecommunication sector with the launch of Econet as one of the pioneer private operators in the country. The company had secured funding from a group of Nigerian investors but Econet did not live long enough because it reportedly could not play local corporate politics before it was sold to new investors.
Masiyiwa’s second coming may be different. First, Liquid Telecom’s Africa Data Centres recently secured a $300 million investment from the International Development Finance Corporation (IFC), based in Washington DC. which means the 10MW data centre does not require local investors to operate in Nigeria. Second, by focusing on data centre, ADC will be involved in the infrastructure side of the Nigerian and West African telecommunication industry which gives the advantage to work with different stakeholders across different sectors.
ADC in a statement said it is focused on meeting the demand for digitalisation across West Africa.
