Airtel launches ‘Nxtra’ to accelerate Africa’s digital transition

Airtel Africa has launched Nxtra, a new data centre to sustain the continent’s needs and serve the fast-growing African digital economy.

The Managing Director, Airtel Africa, Mr Segun Ogunsanya, said this in a statement signed by Mr Emeka Oparah, Vice-President Communications and CSR, Airtel Africa on Tuesday in Lagos.

Ogunsanya said the aim of Nxtra was to build one of the largest network of data centres in Africa with high-capacity data centres in major cities located strategically across Airtel Africa’s footprint.

Ogunsanya said the launch would complement the existing edge sites.

According to him, Nxtra’s ambition will allow it to serve the growing need of African enterprises and its data centre infrastructure will be designed to host the next generation of computing.

He said coupled with Airtel Africa’s extensive fibre footprint, Nxtra would offer secure and scalable integrated solutions to global hyper-scalers, large enterprises, startups and governments.

“Through locally available data centre capacity, speed to access digital services will improve and the cost of managing data will be reduced, hence supporting a new generation of African tech talent.

“Also, Nxtra will enable customers meet data sovereignty requirements while at the same time enabling more local cloud services to be offered in the countries where Airtel Africa operates,” he said.

Ogunsanya said the first major Nxtra facility in Lagos, Nigeria, would deliver 34 Megawatts of total power.

According to him, it is designed to host high density racks and integrate the latest best practice construction to achieve 1.3 power usage effectiveness.

He said Airtel Africa had appointed Yashnath Issur, the former head of Global Data Centre Portfolio Management at Amazon Web Services, as the Chief Executive Officer of Nxtra by Airtel.

He further said that Issur had 16 years of experience in the industry and over the past year, built a team of experts to execute on the strategy.

Ogunsanya said a rapid increase in data centre capacity was needed to support the growth potential of Africa’s digital economy.

He noted that the telco was proud to drive the future of Africa’s digital infrastructure by unlocking opportunities for businesses to grow.

He added that the organisation was confident that its next generation data centres supported its ambition to become the partner of choice for global customers and Africa’s newest tech unicorns alike.