‘Demand For AI-ready Infrastructure In Nigeria Growing Rapidly’

The country president of Schneider Electric Anglophone West Africa, Ajibola Akindele, has said that the demand for AI-ready infrastructure in Nigeria is growing rapidly.

Speaking during an event in Lagos recently, he disclosed that businesses require fast, flexible, and energy-efficient solutions as prefabricated data centres provide a future-ready solution that enables enterprises to deploy AI and edge computing at scale, ensuring long-term growth and sustainability.

He said, “As AI adoption accelerates across Nigerian industries, businesses face an exponential increase in data processing needs. AI-driven applications, including fraud detection in banking, personalised e-commerce recommendations, predictive manufacturing maintenance, and real-time traffic management in smart cities, require high-performance computing with low latency. This has placed immense pressure on traditional data centre infrastructure, which often lacks the flexibility and efficiency needed to support next-generation workloads. According to global industry insights, the power footprint of edge computing devices is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 40 per cent, reaching 40 GW by 2028. This rapid expansion highlights Nigeria’s urgent need for scalable, energy-efficient, cost-effective data centre solutions.

“Schneider Electric, a global leader in energy management and automation, is championing the adoption of prefabricated data centres—a transformative solution that enables rapid deployment and seamless scalability for Nigeria’s AI-driven workloads at the edge. With industries such as banking, telecommunications, e-commerce, manufacturing, and cloud services integrating AI for automation, data-driven insights, and operational efficiency, traditional data centres are struggling to keep pace with the rising compute and storage demands.”

Experts said that in Nigeria, where infrastructure challenges, power reliability, and high operational costs remain key concerns, prefabricated solutions provide an ideal alternative to traditional data centres by reducing construction timelines, lowering energy consumption, and enhancing overall operational resilience.to expand IT infrastructure in line with AI-driven demands, ensuring seamless performance as workloads increase.