As internet usage across the global geo-political zones deepens with increasing intensity, especially in Africa and Middle East zones, a new research report by Arizton Advisory & Intelligence, has projected that social media usage and smart initiatives in the regions will continue to drive the market over the next few years.
The new research findings showed that Nigeria’s data center market was expected to reach USD 218 million in 2026, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17 percent during the period 2020-2026.
The report, which focused on Nigeria Data Center Market, investment and Growth Opportunities between 2021-2026 and other countries’ market trends, indicated that investments in the Nigerian data center market were primarily driven by factors such as digitalization of advanced technology, the presence of major operators, internet penetration, and government initiatives.
According to the research firm, Nigeria currently hosts 11 existing and will witness the deployment of 9 upcoming facilities spread across Lagos and Abuja.
The experts identified the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and its sustained disruptive impacts as a major rapid growth enabler for the cloud market growth in Nigeria, with several enterprises migrating their workload to the cloud platform.
In the report published by PRNewswire, the industry experts also projected that the shift of industry sectors such as BFSI, education, retail, manufacturing, and others toward modern technologies such as cloud and big data would likely aid the growth of the market during the forecast period.
In December 2020, Nigeria launched its “Solar Power Naija” project, focusing on 5 million solar connections by way of solar home installations as well as mini grids.
The experts also predicted that with improved digital infrastructure and connectivity, an expected increase in co-location activities from cloud service providers would likely boost the development of local data centers, significantly boosting the co-location market in Nigeria.
They further noted that by 2025, the government planned to increase the supply share of renewable electricity to 10 percent of the overall electricity generated in the country.
The report further stated: “Africa is an emerging data center market, and it witnessed around 15 data center investments in 2020. The growth in the adoption of IoT and big data analytics services will result in the rapid acceleration of data center development in the Africa data center market.
“The market is evolving, and investments are expected to rise significantly with contributions from local and global data center operators.
“The Middle Eastern region witnessed investments from telecommunication service providers as well as global co-location operators. A major advantage in the Middle Eastern & Africa market is the low power cost.
“Observing these rapid and drastic changes in demand and supply patterns encouraged the industry analysts at Arizton to publish exhaustive and data-driven insights on these current trends in the industry.
“Arizton has a dedicated vertical that focuses on data center knowledge base across geographies”, it added.
