Just weeks after launching its third data center, known as LKK2, in Lagos, the company was honoured with the prestigious Data Center Provider of the Year award.

This recognition underscores Digital Realty’s rapid growth and significant contributions to Nigeria’s digital infrastructure, solidifying its position as a key player in the continent’s evolving tech landscape.

The timing of the award, so soon after a major expansion, speaks volumes about the company’s momentum and the market’s positive reception of its advanced facilities.

The accolades didn’t stop there. Engr. Ikechukwu Nnamani, the managing director of Digital Realty Nigeria, also received a personal honour, being named the Data Center Leader of the Year. This dual victory for both the company and its leader highlights the visionary leadership guiding Digital Realty’s strategic direction.

Nnamani, a respected figure in the telecommunications and data center industry, has been instrumental in shaping the company’s success and its commitment to building a robust and interconnected digital ecosystem in Nigeria.

Speaking to journalists after the ceremony, Engr. Nnamani expressed his profound gratitude for the awards, attributing the success to the collective effort of the entire team.

He noted that the recognition was not just for him or the company, but for the entire Nigerian technology community, which has shown incredible resilience and innovation. Nnamani emphasized that these awards serve as a powerful motivation to continue pushing the boundaries of what is possible in data center technology, ensuring that Nigeria remains at the forefront of Africa’s digital transformation.

He reiterated the company’s commitment to providing world-class infrastructure that supports the growth of businesses and empowers a digitally-driven economy.

Earlier in the event, Mr. Akin Naphtal, the Founder of the African Digital Economy Awards, praised Nnamani and Digital Realty for their significant impact. He specifically lauded their expertise in championing the data center connectivity ecosystem, noting that the company has established itself as the most connected data center in Nigeria.

This connectivity, Naphtal explained, is a crucial component of a thriving digital economy, as it enables seamless data exchange, cloud services, and enterprise solutions.

The praise from a leading figure in the digital economy space further validated the company’s strategic focus on building highly interconnected and reliable infrastructure.

This latest honour adds to an impressive and growing list of awards for Engr. Nnamani, highlighting his consistent recognition as a leader in the tech industry.

Earlier this year alone, he was also recognized with the ICT Personality of the Year at the Digital Innovation Awards (DIA), the ICT Personality of the Decade award at the Beacon of ICT (BoICT) Merit and Leadership Awards, Top 50 Most Valuable Personalities in Nigeria’s Digital Economy and Top 20 Titans Powering Africa’s Digital Infrastructure Revolution by Capacity Magazine for ITW Africa 2025.

These accolades collectively paint a picture of a leader whose contributions are consistently celebrated and highly valued by his peers and the wider industry.

The African Digital Economy Awards, now in its 10th year, serves as a vital platform for celebrating Africa’s digital champions and innovators. The event is deeply aligned with the African Union’s comprehensive digital transformation strategy, which aims to leverage technology to drive economic growth and social development across the continent.

This year’s milestone anniversary event was a powerful testament to the remarkable progress of Africa’s digital landscape, showcasing a vibrant ecosystem that has evolved from nascent tech hubs into a powerhouse of startups, digital innovators, and influential leaders like Engr. Nnamani.

The awards ceremony not only recognizes past achievements but also inspires a new generation of digital pioneers.

Digital Realty Nigeria’s dual award victory at such a prestigious event is a clear indication of the company’s rising influence and its integral role in shaping Nigeria’s digital future.

As the demand for data continues to surge across the continent, the strategic expansion and leadership demonstrated by Digital Realty and Engr. Nnamani position them as frontrunners in providing the essential infrastructure required to support this growth.

The company’s focus on connectivity, reliability, and innovation sets a high standard for the industry and ensures that Nigeria remains a key hub for digital services and investment in Africa.

With the launch, Digital Realty is further strengthening its presence in West Africa, accelerating digital transformation across the region, and expanding access to its global data center platform, PlatformDIGITAL.

Located in the nearby coastal area of Lekki, LKK2 adds nearly 2MW of installed IT capacity across nearly 13,000 square feet of data hall space, supporting the growing demand for scalable, high-performance infrastructure across Nigeria and the broader region.

LKK2 will be interconnected with Digital Realty’s existing LKK1 facility, which serves as the landing station for the 2Africa subsea cable, offering customers seamless access to the cable’s 46+ landing points in 33 countries across Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

The integration of LKK2 with the 2Africa cable landing station at LKK1 enables businesses in West Africa to leverage low-latency connectivity and reliable access to global cloud and network services. This setup supports improved application performance and enhances access to international digital ecosystems through a carrier-neutral platform.

This new facility integrates with ServiceFabric, Digital Realty’s global interconnection and orchestration platform, ensuring low-latency, high-throughput connectivity to local, regional, and international destinations.

Through ServiceFabric, LKK2 will interconnect with LOS1, the region’s top internet peering point, and LOS2, Digital Realty’s highly connected data centers located on Victoria Island in Lagos.

Together, this ecosystem delivers robust resilience, redundancy, speed, and scale for enterprise and hyperscale customers seeking to expand into a fast-growing digital market, ensuring continuous, reliable operations.

“LKK2 is a significant milestone in our journey to support digital transformation in Africa,” said Ike Nnamani, managing director, Digital Realty in Nigeria. “Our continued investment in Nigeria and the broader African region reinforces our commitment to enabling seamless global interconnectivity and providing a future-ready infrastructure platform for local and global enterprises.”

This strategic expansion reinforces Digital Realty’s commitment to advancing Africa’s digital transformation by delivering the infrastructure and connectivity needed to support innovation and growth across the continent.

Recently ranked number one in Africa on Cloudscene’s Data Center Ecosystem Leaderboard, the company continues to cement its position as a leading enabler of the continent’s digital future.

Akinsanya Leads NiRA Team on Tour of Digital Realty Data Centre Facility in Lagos

With the exponential growth of data and the acceleration of digital initiatives across the region, LKK2 provides the additional capacity which enterprises and content providers need to grow, scale, and connect – wherever and whenever they need to.

LKK2, due to become operational later this year, will support both local enterprises and multinational organizations seeking reliable, secure, and interconnected infrastructure in Africa.

Speaking during a courtesy visit by the Executive Committee of the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA) as a fall out of the Association’s ICT Growth Conference with the theme “Impact of AI On National Development: Prospects, Policies, and Challenges in Nigeria”, Nnamani noted that people developing ethical solutions for AI are few compared to people producing non-ethical solutions, but have come to take advantage and make money.

Nnamani explained that this trend is not peculiar to Nigeria, but also the reason most developed countries are seeking ways to regulate AI as soon as possible.

“Even the U.S. have a major effort, both in their congress as well as the Executive, to ensure there is work being done on AI Safety and Best Practices, reason being that some companies or individuals are only looking at AI from the value it adds to them, without thinking of what the consequences for any value is. One start looking at it from an ethical standpoint

U.S. and every other country, their governments are actively involved in creating the right policy, to be sure that it is not abused. But more importantly, to be sure they are able to answer it well.”

While applauding the regulators, he said that on the side of regulation in Nigeria, it is a work in progress. “I don’t even see it is a problem or challenge because to the best on my knowledge AI has not gone too far in its adoption in Nigeria. That means our government, across all areas, need to look back and ask; is there any potential harm from this service or technology? How do we mitigate it? What do we do to stop that harm? And these are things they are doing now by asking people to check things, just to be sure that whatever applications you are running, you are running it ethically.”

Nnamani however allayed fears of unnecessary job less, noting that the advent of AI will further drive up-skilling of Nigerians. “Some have said AI will take jobs away. So, should we stop? Truth is that it is not AI taking anybody’s job away, it is just a case of people needing to be re-trained and find out how to use AI for better efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Also speaking on the state of Data Centers in Nigeria, Nnamani noted that although Nigeria have increased the number of Data Centers operational in the country in the past few years, it is not yet enough to take care of its bourgeoning data and digital economy.

“Some report that was published some years back indicated that Nigeria, as at now, should have at least 600 megawatts of IT load, giving the size of our economy, population, GDP, and what it should be if we are a truly digital economy. Today we have about 30 megawatts. So, you can see the percentage of what we have compared to what we need to have. That is even in terms of the size of IT load which is a metrix we use. Now in terms of quantity, for instance, if you go to a city like Toronto, last time I checked there were over 30 Data Centers in that city.

The reality is that we have not started, we are not even anywhere close to starting, if we really understand what needs to be done to have a truly digital economy.”

He observed that the Data Center sub-sector needs a lot of people with foresight to draw investors and put up infrastructure.

“And then, of course, from the government side, it requires a lot of support. Not just from regulation to extracting income to the regulators, but regulation as actually a way of growth for that industry. Luckily, we have very good regulators who understand this part of the telecom industry, so they are as supportive as can be, but we still need a lot. All these must come together for us to see a fully digital economy, which I believe is the goal of everybody,” he said.

In Lagos, for instance, there is a lot of progress in the build-out of this infrastructure, but you hardly see much in every other State. So, there is still a lot of work that still need to be done. There are still some cross-city services that still need to be run for the overall growth of the economy and social wellbeing of the people that the infrastructure still does not exist,” he said.

Nnamani listed some of the key challenges facing Data Center operation in Nigeria to include Power and FOREX, which he said the Federal Government should do good to tackle.

“The truth is that doing business in Nigeria is challenging. Everybody knows that. And the biggest challenge, probably, is FOREX. Initially, having access to FOREX was the issue. But for us that have access to FOREX, it is how is the FOREX trending? And does it create a measure of stability for you to be able to make business projections. Look at power, for instance. Power that you assume should be available to you if you are a businessperson, you pay for the power and it won’t be delivered,” he concluded.

The NITRA ICT Growth Conference gathered industry stakeholders to discuss the way forward in the deployment and use of AI in the system.

“If not, a lot of companies will run into trouble very soon,” Nnamani stated at the Hyperscalers Convergence Africa held Thursday at the Federal Palace Hotel, Lagos – Nigeria.

The event, themed “The Premier Platform for Driving Africa’s Digital Revolution,” addressed the pressing issues facing the data centre industry in Africa.

Nnamani explained that investments by global data centre players over the past three to four years have introduced funding sources that are not typically available locally. “For them, they are looking at their investment in Africa as part of a global investment,” he stated.

Digital Realty has committed around $2 billion to the African market in recent years, a sum not usually accessible through local banks or equity investments.

“They can do that because they’ve got access to what we call cheaper funds as part of the group; right equity system and some other global entities who have access to be able to get funding, very low, single digit interest rate,” Nnamani explained.

However, he said currency instability is a huge challenge. “You have to import all equipment; a very tiny part of it is in the local currency,” he noted.

This issue is worsened when financial models are based on stable exchange rates. Nnamani provided an example: if a data centre’s pricing is set in US dollars and the naira depreciates, the value of their services in USD can fall sharply.

“If by next year, naira depreciates to 2000 and if you convert back what you charge in Naira back to USD you suddenly find out that you no longer sell your service at $500 but you are now selling it at $300 equivalent,” he warned.

The fluctuation undermines the initial investment assumptions. “The basis where you got investment 100% gets thrown out of the window, not because the customers are not there, not because the metrics under which you went into the business were wrong, but 100% based on the devaluation of the naira,” Nnamani said.

To mitigate this issue, Nnamani suggested that data centres might need to adjust their pricing in local currency in response to currency depreciation. “You are dealing with customers who tell you we can’t afford it. Things are hard right now. So it becomes a chicken and egg situation,” he added.

He stressed that only long-term funding could offer a sustainable solution. “The only way around it is you benchmark your price where, literally, as the naira depreciates, you have to increase your price in the local currency,” he advised.

Nnamani pointed to the urgent need for strategic financial planning and diversified revenue sources in the data centre sector. “My concern is, this is a big concern. I think some of the data centre players are going to run into big problems if they are not already in trouble,” he warned.

He called for long-term, stable funding solutions capable of withstanding exchange rate fluctuations to ensure the sector’s viability and growth.