Schneider Electric has urged Nigeria to upgrade its data centres, warning that the country’s current infrastructure is not equipped to handle the rapid growth of artificial intelligence across key sectors.
Ajibola Akindele, Country President of Schneider Electric West Africa, said the fast adoption of AI in banking, healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, and government is exposing major gaps in Nigeria’s data-handling capacity.
He noted that data centres must now be high-density, scalable, and energy-efficient to keep pace with modern computing needs.
“Software has shifted from being a background tool to the intelligence that helps operators predict demand, optimise energy use, and maintain resilience even with power challenges,” he said.
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A 2025 report by Arizton Advisory shows Nigeria has 16 operational data centres with a combined load capacity of 136.7 MW—13 of them in Lagos. Estate Intel also projects the country’s total capacity to grow from 56.1 MW in 2025 to more than 218 MW by 2030.
Schneider highlighted the unique demands of AI workloads, noting that training large models requires racks exceeding 100 kW and advanced cooling systems such as direct-to-chip liquid cooling. Real-time AI tasks like fraud detection and medical diagnostics are also driving rack densities of 40–80 kW in colocation and edge environments.
By 2030, the company projects that 25% of new data-centre racks in Nigeria will support large-scale AI training, 50% will handle mixed workloads, and the remaining 25% will be optimised for lighter inference tasks.
Schneider Electric stressed that early investment in AI-ready infrastructure is essential if Nigeria hopes to fully tap into the opportunities of the intelligent computing era and strengthen its digital economy.
