Airtel Africa launched Nxtra, a new data center business founded on a commitment to meet the continent’s growing needs for trusted, and sustainable data center capacity and to serve the fast-growing African digital economy.
High-Capacity Data Centre In Africa
Nxtra aims to build one of the largest networks of data centers in Africa with high-capacity data centers in major cities located strategically across Airtel Africa’s footprint, complementing its existing edge sites.
Nxtra’s ambition will allow it to serve the growing need of African enterprises and its data center infrastructure will be designed to host the next generation of computing while providing multi-MW capacity in a phased manner.
Secure and Scalable Integrated Solutions
These facilities will meet stringent global security requirements and meet ‘five nines’1 availability. Coupled with Airtel Africa’s extensive fiber footprint, Nxtra offers secure and scalable integrated solutions to global hyper-scalers, large African enterprises, startups, SMEs, and governments.
Reducing the Cost of Managing Data
Through locally available data center capacity, speed to access digital services will improve and the cost of managing data will be reduced, thus helping power increase innovation, while supporting a new generation of African tech talent.
Furthermore, Nxtra is enabling customers to meet data sovereignty requirements while at the same time enabling more local cloud services to be offered in the countries where Airtel Africa operates.
Lagos-based Facility to Deliver Data Centre
The first major Nxtra facility in Lagos, Nigeria, will deliver 34 MW of total power. It aims to host high-density racks and incorporate the latest best practice construction for achieving a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.3. The anticipated go-live date is mid-2025.
To deliver on Nxtra’s vision, Airtel Africa has appointed Yashnath Issur, the former head of Global Data Centre Portfolio Management at Amazon Web Services, as CEO of Nxtra by Airtel.
Yashnath has 16 years of experience in the industry and has, over the past year, built a team of experts to execute the strategy.