(Ecofin Agency) - • Equinix plans to invest $140 million to expand its data infrastructure in Nigeria, including a new data center in Port Harcourt.
• The move aims to improve bandwidth capacity and bridge Nigeria’s digital divide between coastal and inland regions.
• The investment is part of Equinix’s broader $390 million plan to grow its footprint across Africa over the next five years.

The global digital infrastructure company Equinix has announced plans to invest $140 million over the next two years in West Africa, with a strong focus on Nigeria. The funds will go toward expanding its existing facilities, including building a new data center in Port Harcourt and upgrading a third site in Lagos.

The new Port Harcourt facility will host a landing station for Meta’s 2Africa submarine cable, the first outside of Lagos. This is expected to boost bandwidth and network resilience in a region that plays a key role in Nigeria’s oil economy.

By choosing Port Harcourt, Equinix is taking a step toward decentralizing digital infrastructure, which is heavily concentrated in Lagos. Right now, the city handles about 70% of Nigeria’s submarine cable landings and is home to most of the country’s data centers. This concentration has deepened a long-standing digital divide between urban coastal cities and underserved inland areas. Equinix hopes its expansion will not only increase access to digital services in the south but also create more interconnection points for cloud providers and businesses.

The $140 million investment is part of a larger $390 million plan by Equinix to build and expand data centers across Africa over the next five years. It also builds on the company’s $320 million acquisition of MainOne in 2022, a key player in West African connectivity that laid the groundwork for Equinix’s presence on the continent.

In Nigeria, where demand for digital services is growing fast, data centers are becoming essential to support everything from cloud computing and video streaming to e-commerce and digitized public services. Despite efforts to improve connectivity — including with major submarine cables like 2Africa and Google’s Equiano — Nigeria’s high-speed internet penetration remains stuck at around 45.6%. That is still far from the government’s target of 70% by 2025.

A major roadblock is the lack of fiber infrastructure in inland regions, which limits reliable internet access across much of the country.