Airtel Africa has commenced construction of its data centre, Nxtra, a 44-megawatt (MW) hyperscale facility in Tatu City, Nairobi, marking a major acceleration of the company’s Africa-wide digital infrastructure investment.
The groundbreaking in September 2025 positions the Tatu City project to become the largest single data centre in East Africa. Scheduled to go live in the first quarter of 2027, the facility is designed for high-density, high-capacity hosting, anticipating soaring demand from cloud providers and next-generation Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads across the continent. The Nairobi investment underscores Airtel Africa’s strategic B2B push to capture the exponential growth in African data consumption.
The Kenyan project is the second major build in Nxtra’s pipeline. It follows the commencement of construction on a massive facility in Lagos, Nigeria—a 42MW project that will be delivered in four phases and is projected to be fully operational by 2028. This multi-country rollout plan is supported by a multi-year partnership with Vertiv, which will supply critical digital infrastructure, including advanced thermal management systems and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units, along with comprehensive maintenance services across markets, including Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Nxtra is integrating advanced technology and sustainability measures into its buildout. The company is leveraging AI for operational excellence, a strategy first deployed in India to drive efficiency, including a targeted 10% reduction in non-IT power consumption and a 15% increase in equipment performance through predictive maintenance.
Click to Read More The operator has also committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2031 through accelerated adoption of green energy and implementation of sustainable processes, aligning its development with international environmental standards as it competes with regional and global data centre giants.
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