Digital Parks Africa enters Nigeria’s data centre race with Lagos facility

Digital Parks Africa, a data center business owned by Master Power Technologies Group, is set to enter Nigeria's competitive data center market with the development of a new carrier-neutral facility in Lagos. Announced on September 8, the Nigeria Data Centre 1 (NDC1) project is the latest expansion of the company's long-standing presence in Nigeria, where it has been operating since 2001.

The purpose of NDC1 is to cater to businesses, financial institutions, banks, cloud providers, and connectivity companies that require robust infrastructure close to their markets. However, the company has not disclosed the investment value, planned capacity, or expected commissioning date of the Lagos facility. Menno Parsons, the founder and CEO of Digital Parks Africa, emphasized that this investment marks the next phase of the group's expansion in Nigeria, acknowledging the country's growing digital ecosystem and infrastructure challenges.

As a carrier-neutral facility, NDC1 will offer customers and connectivity providers greater flexibility in choosing their connectivity and scaling options. The facility aims to support critical digital services, cloud access, connectivity, and data-driven operations, as demand for digital infrastructure continues to rise across Nigeria and the broader African market.

The move by Digital Parks Africa comes at a time when Nigeria's data center market is attracting significant investments from local, regional, and global operators, driven by increasing cloud adoption, digital payments, artificial intelligence, and the need for locally hosted infrastructure. With Lagos remaining the dominant data center market in Nigeria, the company's expansion aligns with recent developments, including estimates that more than 146MW of additional data center capacity is in the pipeline for Lagos and a target of over 250MW by 2030.

The latest investment is also expected to benefit from a major regulatory shift that may prompt financial institutions and payment companies, currently relying on offshore infrastructure, to migrate relevant workloads to locally hosted data centers in Nigeria.