Nxtra by Airtel Lagos data center, Victoria Island, Lagos

Nxtra, the data center arm of Airtel Africa and its parent Bharti Airtel, is building a 38 megawatt data center at Eko Atlantic City on Victoria Island in Lagos, Nigeria, now under construction and due to go live in 2028. The project broke ground in March 2024, when it was expected to go live in the first quarter of 2026. On a site tour in early 2026, Airtel Nigeria chief executive Dinesh Balsingh said construction was moving steadily toward a new 2028 go-live date.

The facility has passed design validation and received construction approval from Eko Atlantic, and visitors in 2026 were shown piling zones where structural work had been tested. It sits near major fiber routes and undersea cable landing stations, and is meant to host cloud, content and AI workloads for local companies instead of relying on servers abroad. The company is targeting a power use efficiency rating of 1.3.

"This data centre represents a critical part of our long-term vision for Nigeria's digital ecosystem. We are putting the infrastructure in place to bring the cloud to Nigeria," said Yashnath Issur, chief executive of Nxtra by Airtel Africa. Lagos is the first of five hyperscale data centers Airtel Africa plans through Nxtra, including a 7 megawatt site in Nairobi. Once all five are built, the company expects to offer 180 megawatts across 13 core data centers.

The next milestone is the 2028 go-live date.