Equinix to Invest $140 Million to Expand Internet Access in Southern Nigeria

By Frank Eleanya, TechCabal
April 14, 2025

Equinix, the global data center provider that acquired Nigeria’s MainOne, will invest $140 million to expand digital infrastructure across southern Nigeria over the next two years, the company noted in a blog post shared with TechCabal. The investment includes a new data center in Port Harcourt and an expansion of its third data center in Lagos, marking a significant step toward decentralising the country’s internet capacity beyond Lagos.

The move comes five months after Equinix completed the post-acquisition integration of MainOne following its $320 million acquisition in 2022. Now, the company is deepening its footprint in Nigeria, where 70% of subsea cable landings and data infrastructure remain concentrated in Lagos. This pattern has reinforced a long-standing digital divide.

As part of the expansion, Equinix will launch PR1, its first data center in Port Harcourt, which will also serve as the first Nigerian landing station for Meta’s 2Africa submarine cable. The move is expected to dramatically increase bandwidth capacity in the region and reduce over-reliance on Lagos. Equinix will also scale LG3, its third Lagos facility, to support growing enterprise and cloud demand.

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Building resilience with subsea cables

Nigeria now hosts eight submarine cable landings, including two of the world’s most advanced systems—Google’s Equiano and Meta’s 2Africa. Both cables offer design capacities exceeding 100 Tbps, representing a major leap forward in connectivity. However, the benefits of this expansion remain vulnerable without robust infrastructure redundancy.

Equinix plans to address this challenge.

“We’re routing traffic over multiple cables in West Africa on an active/active basis,” said Wole Abu, Managing Director of Equinix West Africa, in the blog post. “The next time a cable fails, our goal is for customers not to notice.” This proactive strategy introduces critical resilience into the region’s digital infrastructure.

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