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By Chinenye Anuforo
Nigeria’s ambition to compete in the global artificial intelligence race is facing a major infrastructure crisis, as industry leaders revealed that not a single data centre in the country is currently capable of supporting true AI workloads.
This assessment came from Ikechukwu Nnamani, CEO of Digital Realty Nigeria, who warned that despite the buzz around AI adoption, the nation is still operating without the foundational systems needed to build or scale homegrown AI solutions.
Speaking at an interactive session with members of the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) in Lagos Thursday, Nnamani said Nigeria’s existing data centres were built for traditional enterprise needs, not the high-density, liquid-cooled, GPU-driven environments that modern AI demands.
“There is no data centre in Nigeria today that is AI-ready. Local AI companies are creating solutions, but they are hosting abroad because the infrastructure here cannot support the kind of computing AI requires”, he said.
With over 300 active AI startups already operating in the country, Nnamani cautioned that Nigeria risks deepening its dependence on foreign hosting, a situation that threatens data sovereignty, local value creation and national competitiveness.
Nnamani described Digital Realty’s evolution from Medallion as a push toward global standards and long-term investment, revealing that the company had to build roads, dedicated power lines and supporting infrastructure in its host community, not as CSR, but as a business necessity.
He also disclosed that the scale of facilities needed for AI far exceeds anything currently available in Nigeria.
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“One of Teraco’s data centres in South Africa is bigger than all data centres in Nigeria combined,” he noted, adding that Nigeria lacks both the volume and the capacity required for nationwide digital transformation.
Power remains the industry’s most expensive hurdle. “To power a 100-megawatt data centre, you need at least $100 million if you are generating your own power. The grid is not an option.”
Estimating the local industry size remains difficult, he said, because many operators are private, but the cost benchmark is clear: $10 million to $50 million per megawatt to build a modern data centre.
Also speaking at the forum, The Managing Director of the Anambra State ICT Agency, Mr. Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata (CFA), stressed that Nigeria cannot talk about AI leadership while relying on foreign infrastructure to train its own models.
“We cannot play at the level we aspire to if we cannot even power the GPUs needed to train our language models,” he said.
He highlighted Anambra State’s cloud-first policy, which hosts its digital services with local providers such as Layer3 and Rack Centre to reduce dollar-denominated cloud spending and strengthen Nigeria’s digital backbone.
CFA pointed to success stories like Optimus AI, a Nigerian team serving international clients, as proof that talent exists but warned that without investment in local capacity, innovation will continue to migrate offshore.“Technology is moving fast. If Nigeria must play in the future, we must invest in our people, our infrastructure and our digital sovereignty.”
