MTN Nigeria has officially launched the first phase of its ambitious $235 million Dabengwa Sifiso Data Centre project, marking a significant milestone in its transition from a traditional telecom operator to a major player in Nigeria’s digital infrastructure landscape. This development signals MTN’s formal entry into the commercial data hosting and cloud services market, a sector that is rapidly expanding across West Africa.
Phase One: A Strategic Foundation
The newly completed Phase One of the facility boasts a robust 4.5 megawatt (MW) IT load capacity, spans three floors, and accommodates 780 server racks. This initial phase alone required an investment of $100 million. Once fully completed, the data centre will scale up to a total capacity of 9MW, with Phase Two—budgeted at $135 million—aiming for Tier IV certification, the highest global standard for data centre uptime, fault tolerance, and redundancy.
Positioning for Market Leadership
With this launch, MTN positions itself as a formidable competitor in Nigeria’s increasingly competitive data centre ecosystem, which has long been dominated by established players such as MainOne (now part of Equinix), Rack Centre, Digital Realty (via Medallion), and Open Access Data Centres (OADC). The Dabengwa Sifiso Data Centre is named in honour of the late Sifiso Dabengwa, former CEO of MTN Group, reflecting the company’s commitment to legacy and innovation.
Pan-African Infrastructure, Local Impact
Leveraging its extensive footprint of over 50 data centres across Africa and the Middle East, MTN is strategically aligning its infrastructure to meet the surging demand for low-latency cloud computing, enterprise IT services, and digital platforms. The facility is designed to support high-performance computing workloads, including artificial intelligence (AI), with modular scalability and advanced environmental controls.
Combating Capital Flight with Local Cloud Solutions
Nigeria currently relies heavily on foreign hyperscale cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, resulting in an estimated $350 million in annual capital flight due to offshore data hosting. MTN aims to reverse this trend by offering in-country Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions priced in local currency (naira), while ensuring full compliance with national regulations such as the Nigeria Data Protection Act (NDPA) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data residency mandates.
“We are going to continue to expand the capacity we have in the data centre,” said Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN Nigeria, during a pre-launch briefing on June 30, 2025. “Part of that is the readiness for artificial intelligence and the processing power that AI needs and uses.”
Carrier-Neutral and Developer-Friendly
The Dabengwa Sifiso facility is carrier-neutral, allowing clients to connect through any fibre provider, not just MTN’s own network. This open-access model is designed to attract large enterprises and government agencies wary of vendor lock-in.
In addition, MTN is targeting Nigeria’s growing developer and startup ecosystem with its MTN Cloud platform, which offers self-orchestration capabilities. This means users can autonomously provision, manage, and scale their cloud resources—similar to the experience on AWS or Google Cloud—accelerating innovation and reducing time-to-market.
“I believe that we will be the first, or we are the first, to offer a self-orchestration data platform in Nigeria,” said Linda Saint-Okafor, Chief Enterprise Business Officer at MTN Nigeria.
Built for the Future
The data centre’s modular design includes 96 prefabricated containers, enabling it to scale beyond 14MW to support AI-ready workloads, 3D environmental monitoring, and advanced containment systems. It also features 24/7 intelligent monitoring, PCI DSS readiness, and role-based access control—making it suitable for high-compliance sectors such as finance, healthcare, and national security.
A New Era in Nigeria’s Digital Economy
As Nigeria’s cloud and data centre market continues to evolve, MTN is betting on its telecom-grade reliability, deep capital investment, and integrated service offerings to capture significant market share. With the Dabengwa Sifiso Data Centre, MTN is not just building infrastructure—it’s laying the foundation for a more connected, digitally sovereign Nigeria.
