Noting this in an interview with Techeconomy, Dr Krishnan said, “Data domestication is a legal requirement of any continent. The data must remain within the sovereign borders of the country. Which is a must, which is a mandate, and which we are pushing through the ministry as well as NITDA, and the Data Protection Commission,” he said.

“This is happening as of now, and it’s a process, so over a period of time, we will get it 100% right.”

Africa Data Centres, a subsidiary of Cassava Technologies, operates one of the largest network-neutral data centre platforms on the continent. And as Nigeria tightens its data localisation policies, the company is helping to build the country’s long-term digital sovereignty infrastructure, ensuring that sensitive workloads stay local, not on foreign servers.

But building a data economy that can handle that responsibility isn’t simple. Beyond compliance, the stakes are national, data is becoming a new form of sovereignty, determining a country’s digital independence.

When asked about the growing wave of AI, Dr Krishnan Ranganath pointed to both progress and challenges. “AI workloads are beginning to increase as of now. And of course, the networks need to fall in place. We have a lot of issues on the networks and connectivity side that is falling in place bit by bit,” he said.

“Once some of the ongoing projects fall in place, that latency part will reduce. Because Nigeria is not just Lagos alone. It goes out to other parts of Nigeria, which is, you know, a home for 180 million remaining Nigerians.”

He pointed out that AI won’t scale if the rest of the country remains poorly connected. For years, Lagos has carried the digital load, but expanding reliable connectivity and infrastructure across other regions is now essential if Nigeria wants to compete in the AI phase.

AI adoption, in particular, depends on strong, distributed infrastructure, something data centres like Africa Data Centres are striving to build across the region.

Still, even the most advanced data centres can’t operate without steady electricity, and that’s where Nigeria continues to find it tough. Unreliable electricity continues to drag on the growth of digital services.

On this, Dr Krishnan Ranganath said, “Power always remains an issue in Nigeria, especially the transmission is the biggest issue for power. Otherwise, you know, we have decent enough power generation in Nigeria.”

He believes collaboration between data centres, operators, and independent power producers (IPPs) is the key to keeping servers online. “Collaboration between various data centres and operators along with IPPs is the way forward, which I see,” he explained.

“Of course, we talk about a lot of atomic power and other related stuff, but we are not ready for that as of now, to my understanding, because the government needs to put frameworks for that. But to start with, better collaboration between the data centres, operators, and IPPs, that takes us a long way.”

That kind of realisation, balancing vision with practical limitations, defines Africa Data Centres’ approach. The company is part of a pan-African drive to build the backbone of the continent’s digital economy. 

In Nigeria, this means laying the foundation for a phase where data sovereignty, AI innovation, and energy sustainability converge.

Companies like Africa Data Centres are taking a chance that these gaps can be bridged with consistent investment, strategic partnerships and patient execution..

At GITEX NIGERIA 2025, global players talked about scaling AI and cloud adoption across Africa, but Dr Krishnan’s perspective was grounded in the realities on the ground: local data, stable power, and connected networks. Without these, the continent’s AI vision might still be waiting for the lights to stay on.

The collaboration will see Broadcom develop and deploy OpenAI-designed processors beginning in the second half of 2026, with full rollout expected by 2029.

According to both companies, the project will deliver up to 10 gigawatts of custom chips, a scale that would consume roughly the same power as eight million U.S. homes or five times the energy output of the Hoover Dam. 

Shares of Broadcom rose by more than 10% after the announcement, as investors believe in the chipmaker’s impact in the AI hardware market.

“Partnering with Broadcom is a critical step in building the infrastructure needed to unlock AI’s potential,” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said in a statement.

While the financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed, analysts say OpenAI’s plan is capital-intensive. Gadjo Sevilla, an analyst at eMarketer, noted that “Financing such a large chip deal will likely require a combination of funding rounds, pre-orders, strategic investments, and support from Microsoft, as well as leveraging future revenue streams and potential credit facilities.”

Experts estimate that a single 1-gigawatt data centre could cost between $50 billion and $60 billion, with Nvidia products alone accounting for more than half of those expenses. This places the estimated cost of OpenAI’s 10GW buildout at a huge scale, stressing the financial commitment required to sustain its growing AI infrastructure.

The Broadcom partnership follows a string of recent hardware deals by OpenAI. Just last week, the company announced a 6-gigawatt chip supply agreement with AMD, which includes an option to acquire a stake in the chipmaker. 

Days earlier, Nvidia revealed plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and provide advanced data-centre systems with at least 10GW of capacity.

In joining the ranks of companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta, which already design custom silicon for their AI systems, OpenAI aims to gain a stronger hold on its computing backbone. 

However, creating high-performance chips from scratch remains a big technical challenge. Even Microsoft and Meta’s internal chip projects have struggled to match Nvidia’s performance in the AI accelerator space.

For Broadcom, the collaboration strengthens its standing as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI hardware boom. The company’s stock has surged nearly sixfold since the end of 2022, driven by rising demand for custom chips and networking solutions. 

Last month, Broadcom revealed a $10 billion order from an unnamed new client, though the company later clarified that OpenAI was not that customer.

The upcoming OpenAI chips will be scaled entirely on Broadcom’s Ethernet and networking infrastructure, directly challenging Nvidia’s InfiniBand system, which currently tops high-performance AI workloads.

If OpenAI meets its 2026 production target, it would be one of the fastest chip development turnarounds in the industry’s history, and a big moment for a company aiming to keep pace with its own growth.