MTN Nigeria officially launched the first phase of its US$235 million data centre in Lagos on Tuesday, along with a cloud service to compete against the likes of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google.
Phase 1 of the Dabengwa Sifiso Data Centre (named after a former MTN CEO) is a Tier III facility with 780 racks and an IT load capacity of 4.5MW.
The second phase of the data centre will be built to meet Tier IV standards. MTN said Phase 2 will boost the facility’s capacity to 14MW, and potentially higher if demand dictates. No time frame has been given for the completion of the second phase.
MTN Nigeria said it invested US$150 million in the first phase of the data centre, plus another US$20 million for the cloud infrastructure. According to TechPoint Africa, MTN Nigeria’s cloud service features self-orchestration capabilities, which means developers can log in and independently manage their computing and storage needs.
MTN Nigeria’s chief enterprise business officer Lynda Saint-Nwafor told TechPoint Africa that its locally hosted cloud service means lower latency and faster access to data, as well as a service priced in naira (as opposed to accepting payments in naira, which Amazon Web Services does).
MTN Nigeria also claims that the Dabengwa Sifiso Data Centre is the largest in West Africa to date. That said, WIOCC Group subsidiary Open Access Data Centres (OADC) announced plans earlier this year to expand the capacity of its new data centre in Lagos from 1.5MW to 24MW by 2027.
