MTN Nigeria has announced plans to build West Africa’s largest data center in Lagos.

First reported by Nairametrics, the facility is expected to offer 1,500 racks and will be carrier-neutral for connection to several ISPs and cloud service providers.

Other specifications have not yet been shared. The facility is expected to operate at Tier 4 standard.

Mohammed Rufai, CTO at MTN Nigeria, said: “We see a high demand in the market, with data usage growing significantly. To cater to this demand and prepare for future growth, we are expanding and modernizing our data center capacity now. This is to ensure we are ready for expansion at the right time.”

He added that the facility will enhance the delivery of content from the likes of Meta and Google, bringing content closer to Nigerian users and improving access speeds.

MTN Nigeria, a subsidiary of South African telco MTN, is the largest operator in Nigeria. The operator already has one data center in Lagos.

MTN is joined by Africa Data Centres, INQ Digital, Medallion Communication, IS Nigeria, and MainOne, all of which also operate data centers in Lagos.

Earlier this year, telco Airtel and its Nxtra subsidiary began construction on a data center in Lagos.