Nigeria’s data-centre industry is gearing up for a dramatic expansion. According to a new report by Estate Intel, the country’s total installed data-centre capacity is projected to rise from about 56.1 megawatts (MW) in 2025 to over 218 MW by 2030, representing nearly a four-fold increase in five years.
The report notes that the sector has already grown at an average annual rate of around 21% since 2020. This growth is being driven by strong demand for cloud services, fintech operations, digital media, and the strategic importance of data-hosting within Africa’s largest economy.
Large-scale projects are already under way: for example, Equinix is building a 20 MW facility in Alaro City, Lagos; Airtel Nxtra has a 35 MW project at Eko Atlantic; and Open Access Data Centres (OADC) is constructing a 24 MW data-centre along the Lekki Corridor.
The typical data-centre capacity size is increasing too: whereas between 2020-2024 the median new facility was about 1.5 MW, over the next five years the median will grow to about 4.5 MW.
This shift aligns with Nigeria’s broader ambition to become a digital infrastructure hub. The country is seeing the rapid expansion of fibre-optic networks, cloud-service deployments, and demands for data-sovereignty and latency improvement. Despite this, the industry still faces headwinds, particularly in power supply reliability, high energy costs, and infrastructure bottlenecks.
With Nigeria’s data-centre market estimated at USD 278 million in 2024 and projected to reach USD 671 million by 2030, investment in digital infrastructure is expected to generate jobs, attract global tech players and support Nigeria’s push to diversify away from oil.
In essence, Nigeria’s data-centre boom is not just about physical servers and racks. It’s a sign of structural change: digital services becoming central to economic growth, a move towards data localisation, and a feedback loop between infrastructure investment and the wider economy. If the necessary support systems, power, regulation, talent keep pace, this could mark a major leap for Nigeria’s place in the digital world.
