Olanite redefining Nigeria’s footprint in global power, automation engineering

Salami Adeyinka

As artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital services continue to reshape the global economy, the reliability of power infrastructure has emerged as a major constraint.

Data centres, healthcare systems and industrial platforms that underpin modern life depend on stable voltage, clean power and highly automated electrical systems to operate without interruption. At the centre of this transformation are Controls and Electrical engineers whose work determines whether critical infrastructure performs reliably or fails at scale.

One of the Nigerian engineers contributing to this global shift is Dare Olanite, a control and electrical engineer working in the United States with Eaton Corporation, a Fortune 500 power management company whose technologies support some of the world’s most critical infrastructure.

Eaton is widely recognised as a global leader in electrical distribution, power quality, voltage regulation and industrial automation. Its equipment is deployed across data centres, healthcare facilities, utilities, manufacturing plants and transportation systems, where even brief power disturbances can result in significant economic losses.

Within this environment, Olanite contributes to engineering efforts that support mission-critical power systems deployed at scale. His work spans Controls and electrical systems engineering, including design validation, manufacturability optimisation and system-level change management for Voltage regulators operating in high-reliability environments.

Industry analysts note that the rapid growth of artificial intelligence workloads and cloud computing is placing unprecedented pressure on electrical infrastructure. Voltage instability, harmonic distortion or momentary power interruptions can disrupt compute clusters, corrupt data or force costly shutdowns.

Eaton’s expanding role in this landscape has driven significant investment in manufacturing and engineering capacity. In Texas, the company recently commissioned a $100+ million expansion in Nacogdoches to scale production of voltage regulators used in power distribution and transmission to boost power quality.

The expansion reflects rising demand from sectors such as hyperscale data centres, healthcare systems and advanced manufacturing, where electrical reliability is non-negotiable. Facilities operated by major technology firms rely on power-management equipment capable of maintaining stable voltage and protecting sensitive electronic loads under continuous operation.

Within this context, engineering decisions that improve manufacturability, reliability or system performance carry implications far beyond a single facility. Product-level design choices can influence thousands of deployments across data centres and critical installations worldwide.

Olanite’s work supports these objectives by contributing to engineering processes that ensure products meet strict performance, safety and scalability requirements before deployment. The stakes of such work extend beyond technology companies. In healthcare settings, power disturbances can disrupt life-support and diagnostic systems. In data centres, even milliseconds of instability can affect millions of users. In industrial plants, unplanned downtime can halt production and disrupt supply chains.

Eaton’s automation and power-quality solutions are designed to mitigate these risks through redundancy, intelligent control and disciplined engineering. Engineers in this domain must anticipate failure modes, validate system behaviour under real-world conditions and enforce protective logic to prevent cascading failures.

Olanite’s role reflects this responsibility, contributing to systems where automation functions not as an enhancement, but as a safeguard against operational and economic failure.

His career trajectory also reflects a broader trend: the growing presence of Nigerian engineers in advanced global technology and infrastructure sectors. As companies expand capacity to support artificial intelligence, cloud services and digital economies, talent from emerging markets is increasingly embedded within the teams shaping these systems.

Observers note that such exposure to global power-system standards and infrastructure-scale engineering creates opportunities for long-term knowledge transfer and collaboration.

As AI adoption accelerates and data-centre capacity continues to expand, the importance of power quality, voltage regulation and automation reliability is set to increase. Companies like Eaton occupy a central position in this transformation, supplying the electrical backbone of the digital economy.

Olanite’s work illustrates how engineers operating behind the scenes are shaping outcomes at a global scale, ensuring that the systems supporting data, healthcare and industry remain stable, resilient and economically viable.