‘Infrastructure Sharing, Resilient Data Centres Key to Digital Connectivity’ 

Emma Okonji

Stakeholders in the technology industry have stressed the need for infrastructure sharing among telecoms services providers, as well as the availability of resilient data centres across the country, if Nigeria must achieve the status of a digitally connected economy.

The stakeholders said this in Lagos during a media workshop, themed: ‘Digital Infrastructure and Artificial Intelligence (AI)’, organised by Africa Hyperscalers, a pan-African market-intelligence and ecosystem platform focused on accelerating the continent’s digital infrastructure economy across data centers, cloud, connectivity, power, and policy.  

Head, Marketing and Communications, Rack Centre, a Tier 111 Co-location Data Centre, Mr. Adebola Adefarati, said shared infrastructure among telecoms operators would speed up infrastructure development and boost widespread digital connectivity for easy internet access in both rural and urban areas. According to him, it will also reduce operational cost and help nations achieve the status of a digitally connected economy.

Addressing the issue of trust among telecoms operators, Adefarati said no operator would want to compromise trust in any form of infrastructure sharing agreement in order to maintain its network integrity and to avoid sanction from industry the regulator that could lead to withdrawal of operational license.    

Chief Executive Officer, Geniserve, a digital infrastructure company, Mr. Gbenga Adegbiji, stressed the importance of resilient data centre that would enhance digital connectivity. “Resilience means availability over time. So we need resilient data centre infrastructure that can power the digital economy, where volumes of online transactions are processed on a daily basis,” Adegbiji said

According to him, if a data centre is built in a particular location and there is no connectivity, such data centre will eventually become just a warehouse. “So data center functions with reliable connectivity to boost access to it, and this relies a lot on submarine connectivity, and of course, after the submarine connectivity, you have the metro network or the long-haul fiber,” Adegbiji said. 

According to him, data centres must be scalable because of the nature of the capital expenditure (capex) that is involved in building a single data centre. Resilient data centre cannot be built to operate for a stretch of 10 years period without salability, because technology is evolving and customers’ demand changes with technology evolution, Adegbiji said.

He further explained that the location of data centres would no longer be determined by access to fibre connectivity, but would be determined by access to power. He gave details of the different kinds of data centre such as Enterprise Data Centre, Cloud Data Centre, Co-location Data Centre and Edge Data Centre, insisting that each of them must be built to have resilience, depending on the choice of the operator, in order to achieve a digitally connected ecosystem.

Speaking, Executive Director of Africa Hyperscalers, Temitope Osunrinde, said: “Digital infrastructure is now as critical to national development as roads, ports, and power. If Africa is to shape credible narratives that attract long-term investment and support sustainable digital economies, the media must understand how these systems work and what it takes to deliver them. This workshop is about equipping journalists with the insight to drive better public discourse, inform policy decisions, and ultimately support stronger infrastructure outcomes.”

The workshop also featured a session on ‘Ethical and Professional News Reporting in the Age of AI’, delivered by Founder of The Media Training Room and Publisher of ThisIsLagos.ng, Mr. Toni Kan, examining how AI is reshaping newsroom practice, ethics, and accountability.