Lagos State is accelerating plans to expand its digital infrastructure, setting a target of more than 250 megawatts (MW) of data centre capacity by 2030 as artificial intelligence and cloud computing demand continues to rise across Africa’s largest economy. The state currently accounts for a dominant share of Nigeria’s commercial data centre footprint, estimated at nearly three-quarters of total installed capacity.
Officials say the expansion pipeline already includes about 146MW of additional planned capacity, positioning the city for rapid scale-up over the next five years. The strategy aligns with growing pressure from AI workloads, enterprise cloud adoption, and increasing demand for local data storage within the country’s expanding digital economy.
Brandspur Banking News Desk reports that the announcement was made during the unveiling of the Kasi Cloud LOS1 facility in Lekki, a development that signals a shift toward high-performance computing infrastructure in the region. The Lagos State government described the initiative as part of its broader ambition to transform the city into a leading digital infrastructure hub rather than only a startup ecosystem.
The Kasi Cloud LOS1 facility is designed as a hyperscale campus with a projected 40MW capacity, starting operations with an initial 7.2MW IT load. The infrastructure includes advanced GPU systems powered by Nvidia H100 and H200 processors, alongside liquid cooling technology built to support intensive AI and machine learning workloads.
Nigeria’s startup ecosystem, valued at over $15 billion, continues to drive demand for scalable cloud services. Research from Arizton Advisory & Intelligence projects that Nigeria could become Africa’s fastest-growing data centre investment market, with annual investments expected to reach nearly $770 million by 2031.
Industry stakeholders also highlighted rising local demand for cloud infrastructure, with enterprises reportedly spending about $850 million annually on foreign cloud services. The new push aims to retain more of that spending domestically while strengthening national compute capacity for AI development.
The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) has also backed the Kasi Cloud project with an $8 million convertible loan investment, signalling growing institutional confidence in the sector.
However, operators continue to face significant structural challenges, including a 64.1% surge in energy costs since early 2026, unstable national power supply fluctuating between 3,000MW and 4,000MW, foreign exchange volatility, and high cooling energy requirements that can consume up to 40% of operational costs. Despite these constraints, officials maintain that Lagos is steadily positioning itself as a continental leader in digital infrastructure and AI readiness.
