MTN Nigeria has officially entered the data hosting game with the completion of Phase 1 of its Dabengwa Sifiso Data Centre. The $100 million facility is the first step in a $235 million plan to build one of Nigeria’s largest and most advanced cloud infrastructure hubs.
The new Tier III data centre spans three floors and houses 780 racks, with a 4.5MW IT load. Phase 2, still in development, will push capacity to 9MW and aim for Tier IV certification—the gold standard in uptime and system redundancy.
With this launch, MTN steps into a field long led by heavyweights like MainOne (Equinix), Rack Centre, Medallion (Digital Realty), and OADC. But MTN’s edge lies in its scale and telecom-grade infrastructure, giving it a solid shot at reshaping Nigeria’s cloud landscape.
“We are going to continue to expand the capacity we have in the data centre,” said Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN Nigeria. “Part of that is the readiness for artificial intelligence and the processing power that AI needs and uses.”
The company sees a clear opportunity. Nigeria still relies heavily on offshore data hosting, costing the country up to $350 million annually, according to industry estimates. MTN’s local offering priced in naira and compliant with local data laws aims to reverse that trend.
MTN Cloud, its new platform, offers developers self-orchestration tools usually found on AWS or Google Cloud. “I believe that we will be the first, or we are the first, to offer a self-orchestration data platform in Nigeria,” said Linda Saint-Okafor, MTN’s Enterprise Business chief.
Crucially, the facility is carrier-neutral, meaning clients aren’t locked into MTN’s fibre network. That flexibility, along with a modular, AI-ready setup and round-the-clock intelligent monitoring, makes it attractive to finance, healthcare, and public sector clients.
Nigeria’s data centre race is heating up and MTN is betting big to lead it.
