Data Centres in Nigeria: The Complete Verified List (2026)
Every data centre in Nigeria, verified: operator, location, MW, racks, real Uptime Tier status, IXPN presence, subsea cables and power.
Nigeria has more carrier-neutral data centre capacity than any other West African country, and the gap is widening. But the market is also noisy: Tier claims that turn out to be design-stage only, megawatt figures that describe a full build-out rather than what is energised today, and “carrier-neutral” facilities where fewer than a dozen networks actually show up in PeeringDB.
This is the verified list. Every figure below comes from a page we fetched on 29 July 2026 — the operator’s own site, PeeringDB, the Uptime Institute award directory, or a dated news report — and we say plainly where an operator does not publish a number.
If you are shopping for a server rather than a rack, start with our sister guide, VPS Hosting in Nigeria: The Complete 2026 Buyer’s Guide, which covers pricing and provider comparison in detail. This page is about the buildings.
One disclosure up front: Lineserve runs a Lagos region and sells colocation, so we are a participant in this market, not a neutral observer. We have tried to write the list we would want to read — every operator held to the same evidence standard, including the ones we compete with.
The master list: every Nigerian data centre we could substantiate
| Facility | Operator | Location | Status | IT load | Space / racks | Neutral? | Networks (PeeringDB) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rack Centre LGS1 | Rack Centre | Oregun, Ikeja, Lagos | Live since 2013 | 1.5 MW | 1,094 sqm | Carrier-neutral | 77 (campus) |
| Rack Centre LGS2 | Rack Centre | Oregun, Ikeja, Lagos | Live 2025 | 12 MW | 3,240 sqm net lettable | Carrier-neutral | (same campus) |
| Equinix LG1 | Equinix (ex-MainOne MDXi) | Lekki, Lagos | Live | Not published | Not published | Carrier-neutral | 77 (LG1/LG2) |
| Equinix LG2 | Equinix | Lekki, Lagos | Live | Not published | Not published | Carrier-neutral | (same campus) |
| Equinix LG3 | Equinix | Victoria Island, Lagos | Announced, Q1 2026 | Not published | ~610 sqm colo | Carrier-neutral | — |
| OADC LOS1 | OADC (WIOCC) | Lekki Peninsula II, Lagos | Live, phased | ~1.5 MW live (Mar 2025); 24 MW site design | 7,200 sqm; up to 3,275 racks | Carrier-neutral | 25 |
| Africa Data Centres LOS1 | Africa Data Centres (Cassava) | Eko Atlantic, Lagos | Live since Nov 2021 | 20.65 MW critical | 9,800 sqm, 10 halls | Carrier-neutral | 11 |
| Digital Realty LOS1 | Digital Realty (ex-Medallion) | 8A Saka Tinubu St, VI, Lagos | Live | Not published | 317 sqm | Carrier-neutral | 66 (LOS1-2) |
| Digital Realty LOS2 | Digital Realty | 8B Saka Tinubu St, VI, Lagos | Live since Oct 2023 | Not published | 680 sqm | Carrier-neutral | (paired) |
| Digital Realty LKK1 | Digital Realty | Mopo Onibeju, Lekki | Live | Not published | 260 sqm | Carrier-neutral | — |
| Digital Realty LKK2 | Digital Realty | Mopo Onibeju, Lekki | Live | Not published | 1,260 sqm | Carrier-neutral | — |
| Digital Realty ABV1 | Digital Realty | 23 Kolda St, Wuse 2, Abuja | Live | Not published | Not published | Carrier-neutral | — |
| MTN Dabengwa | MTN Nigeria | Lagos | Live since Jul 2025 | 4.5 MW (9 MW full build) | 780 racks Phase 1 | Operator-owned, sells neutral colo | — |
| Kasi Cloud LOS1 | Kasi Cloud | Maiyegun, Lekki, Lagos | Commissioned May 2026, phasing up | ~100 MW at full build | ~4 ha campus | Carrier-neutral | — |
| Galaxy Backbone NSSC DC1 | Galaxy Backbone (federal govt) | Abuja | Live | 825 kW (to 2,000 kW) | 128 racks (to 512) | Government | — |
| Galaxy Backbone Kano | Galaxy Backbone | Kano | Live | Not published | Not published | Government DR site | — |
| Cloud Exchange Ikoyi | Cloud Exchange West Africa | 17 Lugard Ave, Ikoyi, Lagos | Live | Not published | Not published | Carrier-neutral | — |
| 21st Century Konet DC01/DC03 | 21st Century Technologies | Lagos | Live | Not published | Not published | Operator-owned | — |
| 21st Century Digital Hub DHDX | 21st Century Technologies | Lagos | Certified at design stage | Not published | Not published | Operator-owned | — |
| Layer3 Lagos and Abuja | Layer3 | Lagos and Abuja | Live (cloud, not open colo) | Not published | Not published | Operator-owned | — |
| ICN / NECOM House | ICN | 15 Marina, Lagos | Live | Not published | Not published | Neutral peering site | — |
| ICN Port Harcourt | ICN | Choba St, Port Harcourt | Live | Not published | Not published | Neutral peering site | — |
| ipNX Lagos | ipNX Nigeria | Victoria Island, Lagos | Live | Not published | Not published | Operator-owned | — |
| Swift Networks Lagos | Swift Networks | 31 Saka Tinubu St, VI | Live | Not published | Not published | Operator-owned | — |
| CloudFlex Marina | CloudFlex Computing | Maroko, Lagos | Live | Not published | Not published | Operator-owned | — |
| Brainshare Ninext | Brainshare Technologies | 15 Marina, Lagos | Live | Not published | Not published | Operator-owned | — |
| Phase3 Telecom Abuja | Phase3 Telecom | 4 Yedseram St, Abuja | Live | Not published | Not published | Operator-owned | — |
| Nxtra Eko Atlantic | Nxtra by Airtel Africa | Eko Atlantic, Lagos | Under construction | 34 MW planned | Not published | Carrier-neutral (planned) | — |
| GTBank DC01 | Guaranty Trust Bank | Lagos | Enterprise, private | Not published | Not published | Private | — |
| Lagos State Data Centre | Lagos State Government | Lagos | Government | Not published | Not published | Government | — |
| 24DNL Duport Energy Park | 24 Data Networks | Egbokor, Edo State | Certified at design stage | Not published | Not published | Modular | — |
Two honest caveats about this table. First, “Not published” means exactly that — the operator does not put the number on a public page, so ask for it in writing on a quote. Second, PeeringDB network counts reflect networks that have registered a presence, not the total number of carriers a facility can sell you; they are a floor, not a ceiling, but a useful comparable floor.
Certification precision: what Nigerian Tier claims actually mean
Nigeria’s data centre marketing leans hard on Tier language, and the four things it can mean are very different:
- Tier Certification of Design Documents (TCDD) — Uptime reviewed the drawings. Nothing has been inspected on site.
- Tier Certification of Constructed Facility (TCCF) — Uptime inspected and demonstration-tested the built facility. This is the one that matters.
- Tier Certification of Operational Sustainability (TCOS) — the operations team and processes are certified, not just the concrete.
- “Built to Tier III standards” — no certificate exists. It is a self-assessment.
Here is what the Uptime Institute award directory for Nigeria actually lists, fetched today:
| Organisation | Facility | City | Award | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rack Centre Limited | Lagos Data Centre | Lagos | Design and Constructed Facility | III |
| MainOne (now Equinix) | Lekki Data Centre | Lekki, Lagos | Design and Constructed Facility | III |
| MainOne (now Equinix) | LG02 IBX | Lagos | Design Documents only | III |
| MTN Nigeria | Dabengwa Data Center | Lagos | Design and Constructed Facility | III |
| MTN Nigeria | Ojota Data Center 2, Level 2 | Ojota, Lagos | Design Documents only | III |
| Galaxy Backbone | NSSC Data Center 1, Phase 1 | Abuja | Design and Constructed Facility | III |
| Galaxy Backbone | Data Center, Kano | Kano | Design and Constructed Facility | IV |
| OADC | OADC Lagos Data Center Phase 1 (LOS1) | Lagos | Design Documents only | III |
| Cloud Exchange West Africa | Ikoyi Data Centre | Lagos | Design Documents only | IV |
| 21st Century Technologies | Digital Hub Data Centre 1 (DHDX) | Lagos | Design Documents only | IV |
| 21st Century Technologies | Konet Data Centre DC01 and DC03 | Lagos | Design Documents only | III |
| 24 Data Networks | Duport Energy Park modular DC | Egbokor | Design Documents only | IV |
| Guaranty Trust Bank | GTBANK DC01 | Lagos | Design Documents only | III |
| Lagos State Government | Lagos State Data Centre | Lagos | Design Documents only | III |
| Etisalat Nigeria | Mabushi Abuja NGDC | Abuja | Design Documents only | II |
Three things follow from that list.
Only five Nigerian facilities hold a constructed-facility certificate. Rack Centre Lagos, Equinix’s Lekki site (certified under the MainOne name), MTN Dabengwa, Galaxy Backbone Abuja and Galaxy Backbone Kano. Everything else in the directory is design-stage.
Some strong public claims are design-only. Cloud Exchange launched its Ikoyi facility as Africa’s first Tier IV prefabricated data centre; the Uptime directory records a Tier IV Certification of Design Documents. OADC’s own Lagos page says “TIER-III certification”; the directory records design documents for LOS1 Phase 1. Neither is dishonest — but a design certificate and a constructed-facility certificate are not the same purchase.
Two large operators are absent entirely. Neither Digital Realty’s Lagos and Abuja sites nor Africa Data Centres LOS1 appear in Uptime’s Nigeria directory. ADC describes LOS1 as a “Rated-3 Data Centre” — that is ANSI/TIA-942 rating language, a different scheme from Uptime’s Tier system, and ADC states ISO 27001 certification and PCI DSS compliance instead. Digital Realty’s Lagos facility pages publish redundancy topology (2N UPS, N+1 cooling at LOS1) rather than a Tier claim. Judge them on those facts, not on an absent Tier badge.
Equinix’s Lagos campus page is a good model of precision: it lists ISO 9001, ISO 22301, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II and, notably, “UpTime-Design” — the vendor itself distinguishing design certification from constructed.
The carrier-neutral colocation operators in detail
Rack Centre — Oregun, Ikeja, Lagos
The most interconnected independent facility in Nigeria and the one with the cleanest certification story. LGS1 opened in 2013 with 1.5 MW of IT load across 1,094 sqm, N+1 gas power, N+1 cooling and a stated PUE of 1.5, and Rack Centre reports 100% uptime since 2013. LGS2 added 12 MW of IT load across 3,240 sqm of net lettable space on a 20,000 sqm greenfield site, taking the campus to 13.5 MW.
Rack Centre’s homepage claims 73+ carriers, ISPs and content networks, access to all eight undersea cables, and ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 22301, PCI DSS and IFC EDGE. PeeringDB records 77 networks present with both AF-CIX and IXPN Lagos on site. Note one measurement wrinkle worth raising on a quote: the homepage cites 7,200 sqm of space for the campus while the per-facility pages give 1,094 sqm and 3,240 sqm — ask which measure a proposal uses.
Rack Centre also hosts the AWS Direct Connect location in Lagos, announced in May 2023.
Equinix — Lekki and Victoria Island, Lagos
Equinix entered Africa by acquiring MainOne Cable Company for US$320 million in April 2022, and the Lekki campus that traded as MDXi is now LG1 and LG2. PeeringDB lists 77 networks at the LG1/LG2 campus, with two exchanges on site — IXPN Lagos and AMS-IX Lagos — which is unusual and genuinely valuable if you want redundant peering fabrics in one building.
Equinix does not publish MW or cabinet counts for Lagos. It does publish a “Guaranteed 99.9999%+ uptime” claim for the metro and the certification list above. LG3 is a $22 million build on Victoria Island, announced November 2025 for a Q1 2026 opening, the first purpose-built Equinix facility in West Africa and the first phase of a roughly $100 million Africa programme. It brings Equinix Fabric into the Lagos metro.
Open Access Data Centres (OADC) — Lekki, Lagos
OADC is the WIOCC group’s colocation arm and the Nigerian landing station for Google’s Equiano cable. Its own page states a 24 MW site load, 7,200 sqm of technical space and N+1 cooling; PeeringDB adds 25 MVA on dual diverse feeds and 25 networks present, with IXPN Lagos on site.
The important distinction here is design versus energised. As of the $240 million expansion announcement in March 2025, roughly 1.5 MW was operational, with the path to 24 MW by 2027 funded in part by the IFC and Proparco. CEO Ayotunde Coker put the build cost at about $10 million per megawatt. Power is a 33 kV supply with an 11 kV distribution network and dedicated transformers per phase.
Africa Data Centres — Eko Atlantic, Lagos
LOS1 is the largest single published critical IT load in the country: 20.65 MW across 9,800 sqm in 10 data halls, in the Eko Atlantic special economic zone, with cold aisle containment, ISO 27001 certification and PCI DSS compliance. It opened in November 2021 with a 10 MW first phase.
Its weak spot is interconnection. PeeringDB shows 11 networks at LOS1 — an order of magnitude fewer than Rack Centre or Equinix. IXPN is present, so you can reach the exchange, but if your architecture depends on many direct cross-connects to Nigerian ISPs, verify the carrier list against your actual target networks before signing.
Digital Realty — Victoria Island, Lekki and Abuja
Medallion, Nigeria’s long-standing independent peering hub, opened a new Lagos data centre and rebranded to Digital Realty on 24 October 2023. The Lagos estate is four buildings: LOS1 (317 sqm), LOS2 (680 sqm), LKK1 (260 sqm) and LKK2 (1,260 sqm), plus ABV1 in Wuse 2, Abuja. The metro page reports 45+ cloud and network service providers and 55+ customers.
These are small halls by MW standards — LOS1’s whole building is 317 sqm with 2N UPS and N+1 cooling — but LOS1 is historically Nigeria’s densest peering point, and PeeringDB records 66 networks across LOS1-2. If you are buying interconnection rather than floor space, that ratio is the point.
Kasi Cloud — Maiyegun, Lekki, Lagos
The newest entrant and the largest ambition. Kasi commissioned its LOS1 campus on 19 May 2026: roughly four hectares in Lekki, designed to scale to about 100 MW of critical IT capacity, engineered for high-density AI workloads, with hybrid gas, solar and battery power on N+1, a direct 132 kV connection to the transmission grid, and a stated PUE target of 1.6 or better. The Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority is a foundational investor, and Kasi positions the campus explicitly against NCP2025 and NDPA 2023 residency requirements.
Treat the 100 MW as the campus design figure. Kasi describes the commissioning as the transition from construction into phased commercial operations, and does not publish the energised load today — ask what is live and contracted before planning a migration.
Operator-owned and government facilities
MTN Nigeria launched the Dabengwa Data and Cloud Centre on 2 July 2025: 4.5 MW of IT load and 780 racks in Phase 1 across three floors, a $100 million first phase within a $235 million programme, rising to 9 MW at full build. MTN sells carrier-neutral hosting and IaaS from it. Phase 1 holds an Uptime Tier III constructed-facility certificate; Phase 2, budgeted at about $135 million, is targeting Tier IV.
Galaxy Backbone, the federal government’s shared-services operator, runs the public sector’s primary facility in Abuja: 128 racks expandable to 512, 825 kW of power scalable to 2,000 kW, 600 kW of cooling scalable to 2,800 kW, a stated 99.982% uptime target, ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011, and diesel generators with 14 days of runtime. Its Kano site is the disaster recovery and business continuity centre and holds a Tier IV constructed-facility certificate — the only Tier IV constructed facility in the country.
Airtel is building the largest announced facility through its Nxtra arm at Eko Atlantic. As of an inspection tour reported on 3 February 2026 it is a 34 MW facility still under development. This is pipeline, not capacity. Nigerian data centre schedules slip routinely; do not plan a 2026 migration around it.
Globacom and NIGCOMSAT we could not substantiate as commercial colocation providers. Globacom operates network facilities and appears in industry directories as a data centre industry participant, but we found no operator-published colocation product page. NIGCOMSAT operates satellite ground infrastructure in Abuja; we found no evidence of a colocation offering. We have left both out of the table rather than guess.
Layer3 does run its own facilities. Its data centre page names Lagos and Abuja sites with N+1 or 2N redundancy across power and cooling and SSAE-18 SOC 1, SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI compliance claims — but it markets cloud and object storage from them rather than open colocation, and publishes no MW, rack or Tier figures. Suburban, Cobranet and Nobus appear repeatedly in Nigerian infrastructure discussions, but we could not verify a colocation facility any of them owns and sells from a page they publish themselves. Treat them as connectivity and cloud service providers until they show you a building.
Interconnection: what “West Africa’s hub” means in numbers
The Internet eXchange Point of Nigeria is the reason Lagos matters more than its megawatts suggest. Founded in 2006, IXPN today reports 123 peers with 148 connections, 5.5 Tbps of connected port capacity, and 72% of peers supporting IPv6.
Traffic tells the growth story better than membership does. Peak domestic traffic crossed 1 Tbps in April 2025 and 2 Tbps in March 2026 — a doubling in eleven months — across 130+ connected members including Google (with a dedicated Global Cache), Meta, Microsoft, Cloudflare, Amazon and Akamai. IXPN has upgraded core switching to 400G at three Lagos sites: Equinix LG1, Digital Realty LOS1 and Rack Centre. Internet Society research cited in the same report estimates local exchange saves Nigerian networks around $40 million a year in international transit.
IXPN’s own locations page lists eight Lagos PoPs — Digital Realty LOS1 and LKK2, Equinix/MDXi Lekki, Rack Centre, Africa Data Centres, OADC, ICN at NECOM House, and Cloud Exchange in Ikoyi — plus regional nodes in Abuja (Digital Realty, Wuse 2), Port Harcourt (ICN), Kano (Murtala Muhammad Library), Gombe (Gombe State University), Warri and Enugu (both IHS Towers).
For a buyer, the practical rule is simple: if peering is your reason for being in Nigeria, the shortlist is Rack Centre, Equinix Lekki and Digital Realty LOS1, in that order by combined network count and exchange presence. If you are building your own network on top of this, our lab walkthrough of How I Built a Full ISP Network in a Lab: BGP Multihoming with MikroTik covers the BGP side.
Submarine cables landing in Nigeria
Nigeria has eight subsea systems landed, which is what makes Lagos the West African gateway rather than merely the largest market.
| Cable | Nigerian landing | RFS | Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAT-3/WASC | Lagos | 2001 | 120 Gbps — the original, and now the smallest |
| MainOne | Lagos (MDXi, now Equinix) | 2010 | Proven at 4.96 Tbps |
| Glo-1 | Lagos | 2011 | 640 Gbps initial, advertised at 2.5 Tbps |
| ACE | Lagos | December 2012 | 5.12 Tbps at launch, 20 Tbps after the 2021 extension |
| WACS | Lagos (MTN is the landing party) | 2012 | 5.12 Tbps initial, 14.5 Tbps after Upgrade I |
| NCSCS | Lagos CLS, to Kribi, Cameroon | September 2015 | 12.8 Tbps over two fibre pairs; CAMTEL-owned |
| Equiano | OADC Lagos, Lekki | Landed 21 April 2022 | Google; 12 fibre pairs, 144 Tbps design capacity |
| 2Africa | Mopo-Onibeju, Lekki (Bayobab) and Akwa Ibom (MainOne) | February 2024 | Akwa Ibom is Nigeria’s only landing outside Lagos |
Two distinctions matter commercially. First, where a cable lands is not where its capacity terminates. Equiano lands at OADC’s Lekki cable landing station, but capacity is backhauled to multiple Lagos facilities — you do not have to colocate at OADC to buy Equiano capacity, and you should compare backhaul pricing separately from colocation pricing.
Second, landing diversity in Nigeria is thin. Seven of the eight systems land in Lagos, most within a few kilometres of each other on the Lekki–Victoria Island axis. The 2Africa landing in Akwa Ibom is the only geographic diversification, and Kasi’s campus advertises adjacency to six landing stations precisely because that cluster is the whole market. If your risk model assumes route diversity, verify the terrestrial paths, not just the cable count.
Power: the constraint that defines Nigerian data centres
You cannot evaluate a Nigerian facility on Tier and MW alone. Power is the differentiator, and the national picture is stark.
Nigeria has about 13,000 MW of installed generation capacity but a grid that can wheel barely 5,000 MW; anything more triggers a system collapse. Actual output typically runs 4,000–5,000 MW for a country of over 200 million people, against roughly 14 GW of privately owned diesel and petrol generation. There were 222 partial and total collapses between 2010 and 2022; 2025 saw two major collapses; on 23 January 2026 generation fell to zero megawatts with all eleven distribution companies on zero load, and NERC recorded frequency swinging between 49.46 Hz and 50.69 Hz against a prescribed 49.75–50.25 Hz band.
What “grid” means for a Nigerian data centre
It means the cheap source, not the primary source. Under NERC’s service-based tariff, Band A customers are those guaranteed 20 or more hours of supply per day, priced at NGN 209.50/kWh at most DisCos effective December 2025 (EEDC in Enugu is the outlier at NGN 160.00/kWh). Band A is the best available and still assumes up to four hours a day of nothing — and the guarantee is a tariff classification, not a physics guarantee, as the January 2026 total collapse demonstrated.
So every serious Nigerian facility runs continuous on-site generation and treats the grid as an input. The strategies differ, and they are worth comparing directly:
- Gas-first. Rack Centre runs N+1 gas power at LGS1 with a stated PUE of 1.5, and markets a gas-predominant mix with diesel backup. Gas is cheaper per kWh than diesel and less exposed to road logistics, but it exposes you to pipeline availability.
- Hybrid gas, solar and battery. Kasi Cloud’s LOS1 combines all three on N+1 with a 132 kV direct transmission connection and a PUE target of 1.6 or better.
- Dedicated HV supply. OADC’s Lekki site takes a 33 kV supply with 11 kV distribution and dedicated transformers per phase; PeeringDB records 25 MVA on dual diverse feeds.
- Deep diesel reserve. Galaxy Backbone’s Abuja facility holds 14 days of diesel runtime — a government-grade posture that costs more per kWh but survives a fuel supply shock.
The power questions to ask on every Nigerian quote
- What percentage of last year’s kWh came from grid, gas and diesel respectively? Ask for twelve months of actuals, not a design intent.
- What is the genset runtime at full load with fuel on site today, and what is the refuelling contract — supplier, SLA, and what happens during a fuel scarcity?
- If the site is gas-fired, who supplies the gas, on what contract, and what is the fallback when pressure drops?
- Is power billed as a flat kW allocation, metered kWh, or a fuel surcharge that floats? A floating diesel surcharge can double an invoice.
- What is the measured annual PUE, and was it measured or modelled?
- What DisCo band is the site on, and what were the actual grid hours per day last year?
Anyone who cannot answer these in writing is selling you a Tier badge, not a power strategy. The same reasoning is why local infrastructure changes the economics of running a business online at all — we cover that argument in Why Local Cloud Infrastructure Matters for African Businesses.
Hyperscalers in Nigeria: what actually exists
Be precise here, because sales conversations rarely are.
No hyperscaler operates a cloud region in Nigeria. Google Cloud’s locations page lists no Nigerian region or zone. Azure’s geographies page lists South Africa North and South Africa West as its only African regions, with no Nigeria region live or announced. Oracle’s nearest region is Johannesburg. AWS’s nearest region is Africa (Cape Town).
AWS has no Lagos Local Zone either. AWS’s own Local Zones location list shows exactly two African Local Zones — Johannesburg and Nairobi — and both are still in “Announced” status. Claims of a Lagos Local Zone do not match AWS’s published inventory.
What Nigeria does have is edge and interconnection:
- A Direct Connect location at Rack Centre, announced May 2023.
- An AWS Global Accelerator edge location in Lagos, announced October 2023, plus CloudFront edge presence.
- A Google Global Cache and CDN/PoP presence at IXPN, alongside Meta, Microsoft, Cloudflare, Amazon and Akamai.
An edge PoP serves cached content and terminates connections. A Global Cache serves YouTube and Google static assets. Neither runs your VM, neither stores your database, and neither satisfies a data residency requirement. If your compliance officer needs Nigerian residency, a CDN PoP is not the answer — in-country compute is.
Regulation: NDPA, NDPC and the new cloud policy
The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 was assented on 13 June 2023 and is enforced by the Nigeria Data Protection Commission. Organisations processing personal data of more than 200 data subjects in six months, or operating in designated sectors including finance, health, aviation and telecoms, must register as data controllers or processors of major importance. Penalties for major-importance entities run to 2% of annual gross revenue or NGN 10 million, whichever is greater, with up to one year’s imprisonment for non-compliance with NDPC orders. The General Application and Implementation Directive, issued 20 March 2025, is the binding implementation layer and sets registration fee tiers from NGN 10,000 to NGN 250,000.
The NDPA is not a blanket localisation law. Cross-border transfer is permitted where the destination provides adequate protection, or under one of the specified conditions such as consent or contractual necessity.
Localisation comes from elsewhere — and it has tightened sharply. NITDA announced a data classification framework in February 2025 requiring sensitive finance, healthcare and government data to be stored in Nigeria. That framework is now embedded in the National Cloud Policy 2025 (NCP2025), published by NITDA. We extracted the policy PDF directly; the operative wording is unambiguous:
“All sovereign data classified as Level 3 and 4 … shall be hosted exclusively within Nigeria, subject to temporary waivers.”
NCP2025 sets a “Cloud First” directive for federal public institutions, establishes a Sovereign Cloud Governance Committee, and defines four data levels. Level 4 (classified — military intelligence, Critical National Information Infrastructure) must sit on-premises within the institution, in a colocated private data centre, or in a government-certified private cloud inside Nigeria. Level 3 (highly sensitive, including regulated records and designated CNII) must be primarily hosted in a private or secure hybrid cloud within Nigeria, with cross-border transfer only under NDPA conditions. Level 2 is “highly recommended” in-country. Level 1 is flexible. A Strategic Investment Waiver gives global hyperscalers a temporary path to market entry contingent on verifiable in-country infrastructure commitments — which is precisely why hyperscaler build announcements for Nigeria are worth watching.
On licensing: operating a data centre in Nigeria does not itself require a dedicated NCC licence, but deploying fibre, or selling internet access or infrastructure colocation as a service, constitutes a telecommunications service requiring the relevant NCC licence. Ask any prospective provider which NCC licences they hold in their own name rather than through a partner.
How to choose a Nigerian data centre
Carrier neutrality is a spectrum, not a badge. Every operator in the table calls itself neutral. The PeeringDB counts separate the claim from the reality: 77 networks at Rack Centre and at Equinix LG1/LG2, 66 across Digital Realty LOS1-2, 25 at OADC, 11 at Africa Data Centres. Ask for the current carrier list, then check that your upstreams are on it.
Price the cross-connect, not just the rack. In an interconnection-dense building, three or four cross-connects can cost more over three years than the cabinet. Get the monthly cross-connect fee, the one-time install fee, whether intra-building and inter-building cross-connects are priced differently, and whether the IXPN port is separate.
Nail down remote hands scope before you sign. Ask for included hours per month, the hourly rate beyond that, response SLA by severity, whether after-hours carries a premium, and specifically what is excluded — many contracts exclude anything involving opening a chassis or logging into your OS.
Understand the power billing model. Flat kW allocation is predictable and usually more expensive. Metered kWh is cheaper when you are under-utilised and brutal when you are not. A fuel surcharge floats with diesel and is the single biggest source of Nigerian invoice surprise. Ask which model applies and for twelve months of a comparable customer’s power line item.
Match the facility to the actual need. For a few racks with heavy peering, Digital Realty LOS1’s 317 sqm is not a limitation — it is the densest network room in West Africa. For a 500 kW deployment, you need Rack Centre LGS2, Africa Data Centres, MTN Dabengwa or Kasi. Those are different purchases.
Ask what is energised today. OADC’s site is designed for 24 MW and was running about 1.5 MW in March 2025. Kasi’s campus is designed for 100 MW and commissioned in May 2026. Both are real; neither published figure is what you can contract for tomorrow.
Nigeria compares closely with East Africa on all of these dimensions — if you are choosing between markets, our Data Centres in Kenya: The Complete Verified List (2026) guide runs the same analysis for Nairobi and Mombasa, and VPS Hosting in Kenya: The Complete 2026 Buyer’s Guide covers the Kenyan hosting market.
Where Lineserve fits — and where it does not
Lineserve runs a live Lagos region, ng-1a, and sells three things that are relevant to this page: cloud compute in-country, dedicated servers, and colocation.
If you need a Nigerian footprint but do not need a cabinet, Cloud Servers is the fastest route. It is a resource-based configurator rather than fixed instance families, priced per resource per month:
| Resource | NGN / month | USD / month |
|---|---|---|
| vCPU | NGN 4,330 | $4.33 |
| RAM (per GB) | NGN 3,060 | $3.06 |
| SSD (per GB) | NGN 250 | $0.25 |
| IPv4 address | NGN 1,500 | $1.50 |
A 4 vCPU / 8 GB / 160 GB build with one IPv4 comes to NGN 83,300 ($83.30) a month. IPv6 /64 is included free. Annual billing is pay for ten months, get twelve. If you would rather pick a preset than move sliders, the Linux VPS plans are built from the same rates — L1 is that exact 4 vCPU / 8 GB / 160 GB footprint at NGN 83,300 ($83.30), and S2 starts the line at NGN 21,950 ($21.95). Live products carry a 99.9% uptime SLA.
Colocation is the on-topic option if you own hardware:
| Option | Space | Power | NGN / month | USD / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single U | 1U | 1A / 120 W | NGN 153,000 | $100 |
| Quarter rack | 10U | 500 W | NGN 1,530,000 | $1,000 |
| Half rack | 21U | 1 kW, A+B redundant | NGN 3,213,000 | $2,100 |
| Full rack | 42U | 3 kW, A+B redundant | NGN 6,426,000 | $4,200 |
| Private cage | Custom | Custom | Quote | Quote |
Power drawn above a footprint’s allowance bills at NGN 765,000 ($500) per kW per month.
Running in ng-1a gives you a local region and data residency for the Nigeria Data Protection Act, and you pay in Naira by card or bank transfer — no foreign card or forex conversion is required. If you are also handling collections, Accepting Payments in Africa: M-Pesa, Paystack & Flutterwave covers the Nigerian gateway landscape.
Where Lineserve is not the answer: Lineserve has not stated any Uptime Institute Tier certification or ISO certification, so if your procurement requires a constructed-facility Tier certificate on the building, the shortlist is Rack Centre, Equinix Lekki, MTN Dabengwa or Galaxy Backbone. If you need 50+ direct cross-connects to Nigerian carriers, go to Rack Centre or Equinix. If you need a 500 kW hall for AI training, go to Kasi, Africa Data Centres or Rack Centre LGS2. And if a US or EU cloud region genuinely suits your workload better, use it.
If you want to try the Lagos region first, launch a server from the console — Getting Started with Lineserve Cloud: Launch Your First VPS walks through the first deploy, and Migrating a Site from Shared cPanel Hosting to a VPS covers moving an existing site across.
FAQ
How many data centres are there in Nigeria?
We substantiated 31 facilities in the table above. Around 27 are operating today; the remainder — Equinix LG3, Nxtra Eko Atlantic, 21st Century’s DHDX and the 24DNL modular site — are announced, under construction, or certified only at the design stage. Published market counts vary between about 20 and 28 depending on whether a “facility” means a building, a campus or an operator, and whether announced sites are counted.
Which is the biggest data centre in Nigeria?
By published critical IT load, Africa Data Centres LOS1 at 20.65 MW. By campus IT load, Rack Centre at 13.5 MW across LGS1 and LGS2. By ultimate design, Kasi Cloud’s Lekki campus at roughly 100 MW, though only a fraction is energised. Airtel’s Nxtra build at 34–38 MW would be the largest single facility once complete.
Which Nigerian data centres actually hold Uptime Institute certification?
Five facilities hold a Certification of Constructed Facility: Rack Centre Lagos (III), Equinix/MainOne Lekki (III), MTN Dabengwa (III), Galaxy Backbone Abuja NSSC DC1 Phase 1 (III) and Galaxy Backbone Kano (IV). Everything else in the Uptime directory for Nigeria is Certification of Design Documents.
Does AWS, Google Cloud, Azure or Oracle have a region in Nigeria?
No. None of the four has a cloud region in Nigeria, and AWS has no Lagos Local Zone. Nigeria has edge PoPs, a Google Global Cache at IXPN, and an AWS Direct Connect location at Rack Centre.
How many cables land in Nigeria?
Eight: SAT-3/WASC, Glo-1, MainOne, ACE, WACS, NCSCS, Equiano and 2Africa. Seven land in Lagos; 2Africa also lands at Akwa Ibom, the only Nigerian landing outside Lagos.
Does the NDPA require me to host in Nigeria?
Not by itself — the NDPA permits cross-border transfer under defined conditions. Localisation obligations come from NITDA’s National Cloud Policy 2025 and the data classification framework, which require Level 3 and Level 4 sovereign data to be hosted exclusively in Nigeria. Sector regulators, including the CBN for financial data, impose their own requirements.
Can I peer at IXPN without colocating in Lagos?
IXPN has regional nodes in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano, Enugu, Warri and Gombe, but the traffic and the members are overwhelmingly in Lagos — 400G core switching is deployed at Equinix LG1, Digital Realty LOS1 and Rack Centre. For meaningful peering, be in Lagos.
The short version
Buying interconnection? Rack Centre or Equinix Lekki — 77 networks each, two exchanges at Equinix, 400G IXPN core at both. Digital Realty LOS1 is a close third at 66 networks in a much smaller room.
Buying scale? Africa Data Centres LOS1 (20.65 MW, Eko Atlantic), Rack Centre LGS2 (12 MW, Ikeja) or MTN Dabengwa (4.5 MW today, 9 MW at full build). Kasi Cloud and Nxtra are the 2026–2027 story.
Buying certainty? Only five Nigerian facilities hold an Uptime constructed-facility certificate. If your auditor cares about the difference between a drawing and a building, that is your shortlist.
Buying compute, not concrete? A local region in Lagos gets you NDPA data residency and Naira billing without a cabinet. Lineserve’s Cloud Servers configurator runs in ng-1a from NGN 13,890 ($13.89) a month, with Colocation from NGN 153,000 ($100) for a single U if you do own the hardware.
Whatever you choose, ask the power questions first. In Nigeria, the grid is a discount, not a utility — and the operator who answers those six questions in writing is telling you more about their reliability than any Tier badge on the wall.