Airtel launches “Nxtra” data center to drive up Africa’s digital transition

Airtel Africa has successfully launched Nxtra by Airtel (“Nxtra”), a new data center business founded on a commitment to meet the continent’s growing needs for trusted, and sustainable data center capacity and to serve the fast-growing African digital economy.

Airtel Africa’s Group CEO, Segun Ogunsanya noted that a rapid increase in data center capacity is needed to support the growth potential of Africa’s digital economy. 

“We’re proud to drive the future of Africa’s digital infrastructure, unlocking opportunities for businesses to grow and fueling economic prosperity.”

Ogunsanya said Airtel Africa’s team has consistently shown the ability to deliver on infrastructure projects across Africa, “and we are confident that our next-generation data centers will support our ambition to become the partner of choice for global customers and Africa’s newest tech unicorns alike.”

Nxtra aims to build one of the largest networks of data centers in Africa with high-capacity data centers in major cities located strategically across Airtel Africa’s footprint, complementing its existing edge sites.

This is expected to serve the growing needs of African enterprises and its data center infrastructure will be designed to host the next generation of computing while providing multi-MW capacity in a phased manner.

These facilities will meet stringent global security requirements and meet ‘five nines’1 availability. Coupled with Airtel Africa’s extensive fiber footprint, Nxtra offers secure and scalable integrated solutions to global hyper-scalers, large African enterprises, startups, SMEs, and governments.

Through locally available data center capacity, speed to access digital services will improve and the cost of managing data will be reduced, thus helping power increased innovation, while supporting a new generation of African tech talent. Furthermore, Nxtra is enabling customers to meet data sovereignty requirements while at the same time enabling more local cloud services to be offered in the countries where Airtel Africa operates.

The first major Nxtra facility in Lagos, Nigeria, will deliver 34 MW of total power. It is designed to host high-density racks and integrate the latest best practice construction to achieve 1.3 power usage effectiveness (PUE). It is expected to be live in mid-2025.

To deliver on Nxtra’s vision, Airtel Africa has appointed Yashnath Issur, the former head of Global Data Centre Portfolio Management at Amazon Web Services, as CEO of Nxtra by Airtel. Yashnath has 16 years of experience in the industry and has, over the past year, built a team of experts to execute the strategy.