Airtel's Nxtra Announces Plans for Five Data Centres in Africa

In a further boost to the African data centre ecosystem, Airtel’s Nxtra, has announced plans to set up five data centres within the continent. So far, Nxtra Data Centres has operated exclusively in India – with 12 data centres and 120 Edge facilities or Points-of-Presence in its portfolio. Although Nxtra Data Centres will be newly introduced to the African continent, its parent company Airtel is one of the major telcos in the continent – operational in 14 countries. Here, Airtel operates 40 edge data centres utilized exclusively for their own captive use.

Nxtra Data Centres, founded in 2013, is a joint venture between Airtel Business and Carlyle Group in which the latter completed the acquisition of a 24% stake in Nxtra for $325 million last year. Regarded as one of the major data centre operators in India, they have invested in two submarine cables to Africa, 2Africa and Equiano. Once set up, they plan to initiate operations and scale their business with hyperscale data centres within the continent. 

Visible rise in demand for data centres in Africa despite economic challenges

Rapid internet penetration and the growth of internet users within the continent is driving Nxtra’s investment in the African market. This was expressed in a statement by the Airtel Global Business CEO, Vani Venkatesh, in which he said “Compared to even about three-to-five years back, there’s a multi-fold increase in the amount of data that’s being transferred. There are customers who want 99.99% uptime across the four diversity paths … So that’s a higher responsibility on us to make sure that the networks are upgraded and the delivery is robust. Everything is real time and the lead time is reduced. There’s redundancy, there’s diversity. And there’s digitization so that it’s seamless and on-demand. We are scaling up dramatically to ensure we continue to meet the growing needs of our customers,” elaborates Venkatesh.

So far, in the past year, a spate of companies have announced or completed plans to enter the African market. Notably, Equinix’s $320 million acquisition of MainOne in 2022 marked its introduction to the continent. In addition, top technology companies including Google and Facebook also announced plans to set up a substation in Lagos and a cable landing station in Nigeria respectively. Finally, Africa Data Centres also announced its intention to commence construction of a new data center facility in Accra, Ghana thus expanding its footprint within the continent. Despite the recent investments into the niche sector, we believe that there’s room for more as we progress further into the digital age.

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