Airtel Nigeria says it is building what will be Nigeria’s largest data centre, directly challenging MTN’s recently launched $235 million Sifiso Dabengwa Data Centre, which is currently regarded as the biggest Tier III facility in West Africa.
At a recent media briefing, Airtel Nigeria’s CEO, Dinesh Balsingh, and Director of Airtel Business, Ogo Ofomata, revealed that the telco is developing a hyperscale data centre with an IT load of 38 megawatts, to be located in Eko Atlantic, Lagos. That is more than eight times the IT load of MTN’s current capacity, which sits at 4.5 MW, with room to scale up to 9 MW in future phases.
“It will be Nigeria’s largest data centre,” said Ofomata. “We don’t want to start small. We are building at a hyperscale level, designed for the new server loads that modern infrastructure demands.”
This scale puts Airtel on a collision course with MTN’s facility, which was widely celebrated upon its launch in July 2025. MTN’s data centre boasts 780 racks, 96 modular containers and is designed to attract enterprise customers and local cloud users.
Similarly, Ofomata revealed that the data centre is built to type for the large global cloud, meaning that, like MTN’s Dabengwa Data Centre, it can take on global competitors such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
Unlike MTN, Airtel is citing its data centre at Eko Atlantic. Ofomata said the decision was based on several considerations, including security and access to reliable power.
In addition to the 38 MW IT load, she noted that while data centres typically have rack power of around 1.5 kilowatts, Airtel is starting at six kilowatts — underscoring the facility’s readiness for heavy computational workloads.
Focusing on AI rather than cloud
While MTN’s data centre plays heavily into local cloud hosting, Airtel’s CEO says their facility is being built with a focus on artificial intelligence.
“Data centres are actually for artificial intelligence,” Balsingh said. “Just take GPU servers—they are ten times the size of a CPU server and have a hundred times the computing power.”
He added that Airtel has already begun deploying GPU servers, citing a recent batch delivered to the data centre. The new Lagos facility is being designed from the ground up to handle such workloads, which require significantly more power and cooling than standard web or application hosting.
“It’s not just about small cloud storage,” Balsingh continued. “If you want to make transformational change, you need high-capacity data centres that can handle the computing demands AI brings.”
While the telco has not shared full technical documentation or a launch date, executives say the scale and scope of the project will be made clearer upon official announcement.
Meanwhile, MTN has already launched an accelerator programme to drive entrepreneurs to its cloud services, but with Airtel now in the picture, the competition will get stiffer.
