Airtel Africatoday launches Nxtra by Airtel (“Nxtra”), a new data centrebusiness founded on a commitment to meet the continent’sgrowing needs for trusted and sustainable data centrecapacity and to serve the fast-growing Africandigital economy.
Nxtra aims to build one of the largest network of data centres in Africawith high-capacity data centresin major cities located strategically across Airtel Africa’s footprint, complementing its existing edge sites.
Nxtra’s ambition will allow it to serve the growing need of Africanenterprises and its data centre infrastructure will bedesigned 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 fibre footprint, Nxtraoffers secure and scalable integrated solutions to global hyper-scalers, large African enterprises, startups, SMEs and governments.
Through locally available data centrecapacity, speed to access digital services will improve and the cost of managing data will be reduced, thus helping power increased innovation, whilesupporting a new generation of African tech talent.Furthermore, Nxtra is enablingcustomers 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 Nxtrafacility in Lagos, Nigeria, will deliver 34MW 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 CentrePortfolio 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, builta team of expertsto execute on the strategy.
Airtel Africa’s Group CEO, Segun Ogunsanya said: “A rapid increase in datacentrecapacity is needed to support the growth potential of Africa’s digital economy. We’re proud to drive the future of Africa’s digital infrastructure, unlockingopportunities for businesses to grow and fuelling economic prosperity. Airtel Africa’s team has consistently shown our ability to deliver on infrastructure projects across Africa, and we are confident that our nextgeneration data centreswill support our ambition to become the partner of choice for global customers and Africa’s newest tech unicorns alike.”
Airtel Africa is a leading provider of telecommunications and mobile money services, with a presence in 14 countries in Africa, primarily in East Africa and Central and West Africa.
Airtel Africa offers an integrated suite of telecommunications solutions to its subscribers, including mobile voice and data services as well as mobile money services both nationally and internationally.
The Group aims to continue providing a simple and intuitive customer experience through streamlined customer journeys.