Airtel, an Indian telecom major that also has a substantial footprint across Africa, has now announced the launch of Nxtra, its data center business, in the continent.
In a statement, the company said that the first Nxtra facility with a capacity of 34 MW will be built in Lagos, Nigeria. It is designed to host high-density racks and integrate the latest best practices in construction to achieve a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.3. The facility is expected to go live in mid-2025.
Snapshot of the African Data Center Market
ResearchandMarkets.com valued the size of the African data center market at US$ 2.74 Billion in 2022, and project that it will grow at a Compounded Average Growth Rate of 10.3 per cent to reach a market size of US$ 4.92 Billion in 2028. Meanwhile, Global Information Inc. (GII) Research projects that the African Data Center market will grow by CAGR of 15.41 per cent to reach a size of 1226.8 MW by 2029.
There are established and emerging data center markets all across Africa with the top five markets being South Africa, Nigeria, Mauritius, Kenya and Angola. There are new and emerging markets in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. Terco Data Environments, Africa Data Centers and MainOne (an Equinix company) are among the biggest players.
In its latest report on the data center industry in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Knight Frank made a special mention of Morocco and Egypt, given their historical importance and geographical location, that enable them to serve as connectivity gateways between Africa and Europe.
“Aggregate supply in Morocco is now at 65MW, reflecting a 48MW increase in 2023. This rise is the result of a three-facility announcement from Gulf Data Hub, which aims to bring the first wave of wholesale colocation capacity to the country, with the first go-live dates targeted for 2026,” it said about the former citing Casablanca as a principal market.
The report was optimistic about Egypt given a slew of investment announcements. It said, “In 2023, major announcements have come from UAE-based Khazna Data Centers that announced development plans for a US$250 million state-of-the-art facility in Cairo. This coincided with Gulf Data Hub and Elsewedy Data Centers committing to invest a combined US$2.1 billion across three locations in Egypt as part of a joint venture. GPX Global has also announced a 12MW expansionary plan for its Cairo 2 facility.”
Nxtra in Africa
Given the digital transformation that many African economies are undergoing, the rapid adoption of Coud Computing, automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies, as well as the increased stringency of data sovereignty laws, it makes sense for Nxtra to build on Airtel’s existing presence across the continent, especially in fast-growing data center markets like Kenya and Nigeria, and cater to thes growing demand for reliable and resilient data management infrastructure.
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,” adding, “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.”
Airtel Africa has appointed Yashnath Issur as the CEO OF Nxtra Africa. Issur was previously head of Global Data Centre Portfolio Management at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
