Equinix, the world’s largest data centre company, is significantly escalating its investment in Nigeria, committing to a new $100 million expansion plan over the next two years. The first phase of this plan is a new $22 million data centre in Lagos, dubbed LG3.

Set to open in the first quarter of 2026, LG3 marks Equinix’s first new build in West Africa and signals a major escalation in the “data centre war” heating up in the region’s most competitive market.

This move doubles down on Equinix’s 2022 entry into the market, when it acquired MainOne, a major West African digital infrastructure and subsea cable provider, for $320 million. The new facility will be built in the strategic Lekki corridor, the epicenter of Nigeria’s digital infrastructure boom.

“LG3 marks a significant milestone in Equinix’s long-term commitment to bridging Africa’s digital divide,” said Wole Abu, Managing Director for West Africa at Equinix. “As Lagos emerges at the crossroads of talent, innovation, and global connectivity, this facility is accelerating access to technologies like cloud, AI, and the next wave of startups.”

 The Lagos Data Rush

Equinix is not building in a vacuum. The Lekki coastal strip has become a strategic battleground for digital infrastructure, prized for its proximity to subsea cable landing stations and its emerging status as a special economic zone.

The competition is already fierce:

• Africa Data Centres is running a 20.65 MW operation in nearby Eko Atlantic City.
• Open Access Data Centres (OADC) is developing a 24 MW carrier-neutral facility in Lekki, which also serves as a landing point for Google’s high-capacity Equiano cable.
• Digital Realty, another US behemoth, is also a major player in the region, having acquired Nigerian operator Medallion and built a presence in Kenya and South Africa.
• MTN Nigeria operates its own $120 million, 4.5 MW Tier III modular facility, which it prices in naira to shield local businesses from foreign exchange volatility.

This “data rush” is unfolding in a market with immense, untapped potential. A recent report from Heirs Technologies highlights that while investment is growing, Africa still accounts for less than 1% of the world’s total data centre capacity.

That small pie is highly concentrated. Four countries — South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt — are home to 46% of the continent’s 211 operational data centres, establishing them as core hubs. With 16 facilities, Nigeria is the undisputed leader in West Africa, making Lagos the primary prize.

Equinix’s ‘Fabric’ Play

Equinix’s strategy hinges on more than just “racks and power.” The key differentiator it is pushing with LG3 is the integration of Equinix Fabric.

In simple terms, Equinix Fabric is a Network-as-a-Service platform. It allows a business inside the Lagos data centre to bypass the public internet and create direct, secure, on-demand connections to partners, cloud providers (like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure), and its own infrastructure in other Equinix facilities around the world.

For a local startup or an international bank operating in Lagos, this means they can securely connect to a cloud service in Frankfurt or a partner in London with low latency, as if it were in the same building.

This move shifts the battle from pure colocation (renting physical space) to providing a comprehensive, interconnected ecosystem.

The Evolving Battlefield: Beyond Cloud to AI

Even as Equinix makes its move, the ground is already shifting. The next front in Lagos’s infrastructure war is moving beyond colocation and cloud connectivity to the high-stakes world of Artificial Intelligence.

In the same Lekki corridor, Itana, Nigeria’s first Digital Special Economic Zone, is building a “full-stack growth zone” for AI and data companies. Its focus isn’t on competing with Equinix for colocation, but on providing the next layer: local access to high-performance GPU clusters, compliant data storage, and a legal jurisdiction designed for AI development.

According to UNDP data, fewer than 5% of AI developers in Africa have access to the hardware needed to train modern models.

“Africa must act now to provide its builders with AI infrastructure or risk becoming permanently dependent on foreign platforms,” said Itana CEO Mayowa Olugbile.

Equinix’s $100 million bet is a crucial move to build the foundational backbone of West Africa’s digital economy. But as the Itana initiative shows, the war for physical space is quickly evolving into a race for the compute power and legal frameworks that will define the continent’s AI future.