Telecom giants, Airtel Africa is set to build five data centres across the African continent in the next few years.
To realise this dream, the company has launched Nxtra by Airtel (“Nxtra”), a new data centre business to help the company meet the continent’s growing needs for trusted, and sustainable data centre capacity and to serve the fast-growing African digital economy.
According to the company, Nxtra aims to build one of the largest network of data centres in Africa with high-capacity data centres in major cities located strategically across Airtel Africa’s footprint, complementing its existing edge sites.
Airtel says Nxtra’s ambition will allow it to serve the growing need of African enterprises and its data centre infrastructure will be designed to host the next generation of computing, while providing multi-MW capacity in a phased manner.
These facilities will meet stringent global security requirements and meet ‘five nines’ availability.
According to the company, the first data centre will be built in Lagos, Nigeria and is expected to be live in mid-2025
The company has since appointed Yashnath Issur, the former head of Global Data Centre Portfolio Management at Amazon Web Services, as CEO of Nxtra by Airtel.
Yashnath has 16 years of experience in the industry and has, over the past year, built a team of experts to execute on the strategy.
Airtel Africa’s Group CEO, Segun Ogunsanya said,
“A rapid increase in data centre capacity is needed to support the growth potential of Africa’s digital economy. We’re proud to drive the future of Africa’s digital infrastructure, unlocking opportunities for businesses to grow and fueling economic prosperity,” said Airtel Africa Group CEO, Segun Ogunsanya.
“ Airtel Africa’s team has consistently shown our ability to deliver on infrastructure projects across Africa, and we are confident that our next generation data centres will support our ambition to become the partner of choice for global customers and Africa’s newest tech unicorns alike.”
