MTN to launch data centre to boost Nigeria’s tech ecosystem

MTN Nigeria has launched its data centre aimed at strengthening the country’s technology ecosystem by providing affordable, locally hosted cloud services.

Karl Toriola, chief executive officer (CEO) of MTN Nigeria, spoke on Monday during the press briefing ahead of the official launch.

The cloud platform, which goes live on Tuesday, will allow businesses, developers, fintech startups and large enterprises to host data locally — at competitive rates priced in naira — reducing foreign exchange (FX) exposure and improving service delivery.

The CEO said the facility is the largest prefabricated commercial data centre in West Africa, with an estimated investment of about $255 million.

The telco believes the initiative would help customers save costs often incurred from patronising global giants such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, buoyed by Nigeria’s burgeoning tech ecosystem.

“Today, a lot of the times, developers go and get capacity from Amazon, which is priced in dollars. Your only other alternative to getting capacity from Amazon is to buy your own processing and storage capacity, where you have to cough out a lot of money up front, lay connectivity of whatever type to those servers, and that is a very big barrier for new businesses to start in,” the CEO said.

“With the cloud service that is provided, which is priced in naira, you have reduced volatility to foreign exchange devaluations.

“It allows you to launch any services that you want to launch using IT infrastructure on a pay-as-you-go service and minimises your initial outlay, while, of course, improving the performance, because all of this is hosted locally here in Nigeria, so latency is reduced.

“So, this is going to be transformative for the technology ecosystem in Nigeria.”

Toriola added that the data centre will also cater to larger organisations — including banks, oil companies and government agencies — while supporting Nigeria’s preparedness for artificial intelligence-driven technologies.

‘HOSTING DATA LOCALLY WILL PREVENT BUSINESSES FROM RISKS’

The MTN chief further emphasised the platform’s role in promoting data sovereignty, saying the service ensures critical data remains within Nigeria’s borders, protecting businesses from geopolitical risks.

“We’ve seen all the conflicts in the Middle East of recent. Intelligence forces doing whatever it is that they do, but I think every country wants to protect what is theirs, and data is a critical asset of what is theirs,” he said.

“Hosting Nigerian businesses’ data in Nigeria and protecting them against the exposures to sovereign data risks in foreign states, possibly even aggressive, negative foreign states, by hosting this data in the country is a significant advantage which we put into place.”

Toriola noted that hosting Nigerian data locally will also help organisations comply with regulations from bodies like the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

On affordability, he assured that MTN’s cloud services will be competitive with global providers such as Amazon, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

Also speaking, Lynda Saint-Nwafor, MTN’s chief enterprise business officer, said the company has made significant investments to ensure its new platform matches global standards.

Saint-Nwafor said MTN will be the first to offer a self-service, cloud orchestration platform in Nigeria, similar to what is available globally.

“I believe that we will be the first or we are the first to offer a self-orchestration data platform in Nigeria. When you go to Amazon wireless for example or you go to Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure, as a developer, you can log in and orchestrate your compute and storage requirements yourself,” she said.

“In Nigeria before now, if you wanted compute capacity, you had to go through the provider with assisted processes. But from tomorrow, through cloud.mtn.com, you can self-orchestrate from anywhere in the world.”

Saint-Nwafor said MTN Cloud will offer the same capabilities as the global hyperscale providers, eliminating the need for Nigerian businesses to rely solely on foreign platforms.