Nigeria and other Africa’s march towards reaping the benefits of data centre business is under threat because of power paucity and dearth of the required skilled man power to man the sector, experts have said.
The experts including the Chief Executive of Apolo.us and Executive Chair for Data Center Programmes at Informa, Bill Kleyman, CEO of Kasi Cloud, Johnson Agogbua, General Manager for Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering at MTN Nigeria, Roger Shutte, Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi; and Executive Director of Africa Hyperscalers, Temitope Osunrinde, said connectivity has become the lifeblood of people across the continent, energy insecurity could halt ongoing transformation.
Kleyman who described Africa as “one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets” warned that energy shortages could halt the progress.
“Connectivity is the lifeblood of people. It’s how we live, work and play – and that’s why major organisations are moving aggressively into Africa,” he said.
He noted that data-center power demand on the continent is growing at between 20per cent and 25per cent annually and could reach 8,000 gigawatt-hours.
“The industry is at a point where success requires two things: power and bravery,” he said, adding that global Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption is raising new challenges – with rack densities climbing from 16 to 60 kilowatts and only about 10per cent of facilities ready for AI workloads.
“Vision without execution is just hallucination. Africa has a chance to seize its nugget in this digital gold rush,” he said.
On a panel about scaling to 2,500 megawatt (Mw) of capacity, Agogbua warned that talent, not technology, could become the greatest bottleneck. He said: “We’ll solve power and connectivity. But can we train enough people – and keep them here?”
Shutte agreed no less, asking rhetorically: “As we skill people up, how do we enable them to stay, to support local businesses, and to provide the digital sovereignty we require?”
Rudman said IXPN is working to “domesticate content” and reduce reliance on international routes.
“Before now, Nigeria’s networks were largely access networks, always reaching out to content abroad. What we’re doing is keeping that content home,” he said.
Abdullahi said Africa’s digital shift must pair bold vision with incremental execution and local problem-solving that can scale region-wide, arguing that “many global tech giants began as community innovations solving local problems.”
The NITDA boss urged policymakers, innovators, and the private sector to co-create adaptive, data-driven rules “so technology serves humanity, not the other way round,” citing NITDA’s Intelligent Regulatory Framework as a model that evolves with evidence while protecting the public interest. He pointed to Nigeria’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) program as a way to turn a youthful population into a productive asset. He described AI as Africa’s “greenfield opportunity” to tackle health, agriculture, and SME challenges – not just optimize mature systems. He added that the government is moving to bridge capital gaps through new PPP mediation tools and a National Digital Public Infrastructure linking identity, payments, and data platforms.
Osunrinde laments the disproportionate population of the continent to the number of data centres available.
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“Africa represents 18per cent of the world’s population, yet accounts for less than two per cent of global data-center capacity and under one per cent of compute power. Eighty per cent of our data is still hosted offshore,” Osunrinde said.
He noted that investment momentum is building fast as global vacancy rates fall below one per cent, citing subsea cable expansions by Meta and Google, and new builds from Visa, Equinix, Raxio, Digital Realty, and Nvidia.
But he warned that 600 million Africans still lack electricity, even as new data centers consume the equivalent of small cities.
“The challenge is not only to power homes but to power Africa’s digital economy. Governments must fast-track approvals, open telecom networks to competition, and incentivize renewable energy. 50 per cent of a data center’s cost is equipment – imagine the impact if that could enter Africa tax-free,” Osunrinde said.
The experts spoke during the Hyperscalers Convergence Africa 2025 in Lagos which had “The Power of Convergence,” as its theme.
Across the sessions, one message stood out: Africa’s digital revolution will depend not just on capital or technology, but on coordination — between power grids and policy, between talent and regulation, between public vision and private execution.
Other participants included the Chief Executive Officer, FibreSol, Otuya Okecha; Director, Legal, Equinix West Africa, Abayomi Adebanjo; Chief Executive Officer, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria, Muhammed Rudman; Country Manager, Nokia, West Africa, Marco Rebecchi; Managing Director, Bayobab, Josephine Sarouk; Managing Director, Koltronics Nigeria/former Group Managing Director, Csquared, Lanre Kolade; Chief Executive Officer, Geniserve, Gbenga Adegbiji; Chief Executive Officer, Elektron Energy, Tola Talabi; General Manager, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering, MTN Nigeria, Roger Shutte; Chief Executive Officer, IX Africa Data Centres Snehar Shah; and, Head of IP Business, North, West & Central Africa, Nokia, Karim Amer.
Speakers included Guy Zibi, Managing Partner at Xalam Analytics; Shayo Olumide, Vice President, Heavy Industries, Telecoms & Technology at Africa Finance Corporation (AFC); Vivek Mittal, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the African Infrastructure Development Association (AFIDA); Ben Roberts, Principal at Digital Economy Advisors; Oguche Agudah, Head, Programme, Pan Africa Fund Managers Alliance and pioneer Chief Executive Officer, Pension Fund Operations Association of Nigeria; Hakeem Adeniji-Adele, Deputy Managing Director, eTranzact; Eero Toivainen, Trade Counsellor West Africa, Business Finland; Bukola Ajayi, General Manager, Architecture and Enterprise IT, MTN Nigeria; Akeem Adeshina, Chief Commercial Officer, IHS Nigeria; and Dr. Ayotunde Coker, CEO of Open Access Data Centres.
