Nigeria’s government plans to open a cutting-edge data centre that can hold up to 1.4 petabytes of data when President Bola Tinubu completes his first year in office on May 29, 2024.
The Minister of the Interior disclosed this discussion during a meeting with a delegation from the National Union of Nigerian Associations in Italy (NUNAI), led by the organisation’s President, Chief Rowland Ndukuba. Also, the data centre will store citizens’ biometrics information and other vital residential information.
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In addition, the minister highlighted the value of adopting innovation and technology and the role of novel revolutionary technological solutions in addressing modern challenges. He said this solution would encourage efficiency and accountability across all national activities.
Growth of Nigeria’s data centre
The president of NUNAI additionally commended the Ministry’s efforts to address the difficulties Nigerians were facing in Italy and called for increased cooperation to help stranded Nigerians there.
Nigeria had more than eleven data centres as of 2023, most located in Lagos, Abuja, and Kano. These comprise 21st Century ADC, MTN, CEWA, Galaxy Backbone, Medallion (Digital Reality), MDXi, Open Access Data Centre (OADC), Rack Centre, and mobile. More than $230 million has been invested in this field, and by 2028, the market is expected to reach $415 million.
Airtel Africa launched a commercial state-of-the-art Tier 3 data centre in Lagos in 2022. This is done to host servers for the nation’s enterprises and government institutions. It also introduced Nxtra, a data centre business, in 2023.
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South African data centre dominance
On another note, the Republic of the Congo has started the development of a $72.8 million data centre to accommodate the national data designed to store and process the nation’s digital data.
Nevertheless, due to the expensive data centres, the release from Nigeria’s Ministry of Interior did not specify how the project will be funded or how much money will be required to complete it in less than 8 days.
However, if the project is completed, Nigeria, which currently follows South Africa in the African Data Centre race, could benefit. Teraco, a South African data centre operator, reportedly has more operational capacity than Nigeria, with 11 data centre facilities, which are less operational. In 2023, it raised $680 million in funding as growth capital to expand the company’s solar capacity and data centres.