Country profile: Nigeria

The main area of development has been data centres, with the Nigerian data centre sector predicted to grow from $250 million in 2023 to $646 million by 2029. Operators including Cassava, OADC (who will spend $240 million upgrading its Lagos facility to 24 MW) and Digital Realty are building or have built facilities in the country in the past year, many specifically designed to account for the AI boom such as Rack Centre’s 12 MW facility launched in March 2025. As well as catering for increased internal traffic, Nigeria is an ideal potential host for Africa-specific workloads to be moved out of European data centres, especially given the reduced latency requirements of some types of AI compute.

There is also hefty fibre investment coming to Nigeria. A 90,000 km fibre backbone project, which will quadruple the length of the existing network, is scheduled to begin in the last quarter of 2025, supported by various international funding bodies. The aim is to increase universality of coverage, given 33 million people in Nigeria still lack wireline internet access, but the project will also enhance general speeds in the country, which outside of Lagos can be slow.

Elsewhere on the wireless side, average mobile speeds have risen from 26 to 45 Mbps in just one year, with help from a 5G rollout supported by a number of international partnerships, particularly between Ericsson and the Nigerian government. January 2025 also saw Nigeria’s telecoms regulator approve a 50% rise in mobile tariffs.

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