Technology company MTN has committed over $240 million to a new data centre in Ikeja, Nigeria, The Guardian Nigeria reports. Named in honour of former CEO Sifiso Dabengwa, the 9MW facility will be developed in two phases. The first phase, a 4.5MW Tier 3 data centre, will cost approximately $120 million and include cloud infrastructure.
MTN Nigeria’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Karl Toriola, described the facility as the country’s largest pre-fabricated modular data centre, featuring 96 pre-fabricated containers and accommodating around 1,500 racks across three floors. The centre will have fully modular power and cooling systems.
“With the data centre launch, MTN is at the forefront of Nigeria’s digital space and ready to drive Artificial Intelligence (AI) needs across the country as we expand the capacity of the data centre facility.
“In addition, the data centre will enhance Nigeria’s data sovereignty and ensure that local data are hosted in Nigeria and protected from exposure and attacks.
“MTN is working closely with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) to ensure compliance with data policy,” Toriola added.
According to Toriola, the data centre will provide cost-effective solutions that enable businesses to host their data locally, boost quality of service delivery, and comply with NDPC’s policy on data sovereignty.
Providing further insight on the cost element, Chief Enterprise Business Officer, MTN Nigeria, Lynda Saint-Nwafor, said, “It cost MTN the sum of $100 million for the Phase 1 data centre infrastructure, with an additional $20 million for the cloud infrastructure.”
“The MTN Data Centre will offer a self-orchestration data platform that allows users to log into the cloud service from any part of the world to develop solutions,” she stated.
She added that MTN Cloud would offer more accessible services than those provided by hyperscalers like Google, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure.
Senior Consultant, MTN Enterprise Solutions, Ifeanyi Otudor, explained that the data centre was built to support everything, from high data traffic in the fintech space to today’s and future e-government platforms.
“The data centre effectively puts MTN in a position to address the co-location needs of enterprise businesses and various organisations, including government entities, looking to offload that responsibility to experts like us.
“In addition, we also have about a 2.5 MB and a 3.15 MB transformer for the grid system, along with standby generators to power the data centre,” Otudor added.
