An Information Technology (IT) expert, Mr. Ikechukwu Nnamani, says Nigeria is still two to three years away from developing the infrastructure required to fully support core Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications locally.
Nnamani, Managing Director of Digital Realty, a data centre colocation and interconnection solutions provider, stated this on Monday at an interactive session organized by the Nigerian Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA) in Lagos.
He said that although AI adoption in Nigeria was growing rapidly, the physical data centre environment remained inadequate.
Nnamani acknowledged the presence of over 300 AI companies operating in the country but noted their heavy reliance on foreign infrastructure.
“As of today, there is no data centre in Nigeria that is AI-ready. The closest our facilities can support is cloud services and compute, but none is designed for core AI. This is not a criticism but a statement of current capacity,” he said.
He emphasized the need for new data centres built with specialized features such as liquid cooling to handle high-density AI workloads.
Nnamani also decried the overall deficit in data centre capacity nationwide, stressing that Nigeria suffered from both insufficient number of facilities and extremely low active IT load compared to global standards.
He urged the media to prioritize reporting on active IT load rather than advertised design capacity to provide a more accurate picture of the industry.
The concentration of data centres in Lagos, he added, had become a major bottleneck to national digital growth, affecting latency, uptime, and quality of service for users across the country.
Nnamani advocated for at least two data centres in every state capital to support Nigeria’s digital economy and decentralize infrastructure access.
He also highlighted the challenges of high operational costs and reliance on self-generated power, but said industry players viewed these obstacles as opportunities for innovation and investment.
Responding to questions on infrastructure investment and community engagement, Nnamani explained that capital-intensive undertakings—such as dedicated power installations and access road construction—were essential to project execution and not initially conceived as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
“We could not have been able to build the data centre without these investments; we had no option. These investments are critical for the successful landing of the submarine cable,” he said.
Nnamani further noted that Digital Realty had made substantial foreign direct investment (FDI) in Nigeria, stressing that the company’s equity-based commitment reflected its long-term confidence in the Nigerian market.
