MTN eyes slice of Nigeria’s $850m cloud market

MTN Nigeria wants a slice of Nigeria’s $850 million cloud market, currently dominated by Amazon’s AWS, Google’s cloud, and Microsoft’s Azure, with the launch of its new cloud services

According to Lynda Saint-Nwafor, Chief Enterprise Business Officer at MTN Nigeria, Nigerian businesses spent between $600 million and $850 million on cloud services in 2024. According to Statista, revenue from Nigeria’s public cloud market is projected to reach $1.63 billion in 2025, and infrastructure as a service is projected to hit $500.37 million by year’s end.

The cloud service, which costs $20 million, will run on compute from its new $100 million data centre. The cloud service will be priced in naira and is targeted at startup founders, banks, government agencies, and businesses.

Read also: Investors reap N3trn from MTN’s market rally

Saint-Nwafor noted that MTN’s cloud service will launch at a 15 to 20 percent discount at launch. Data centres play a critical role in digital economies, enabling the secure storage, processing, and management of data. They also help with the localisation of content from global platforms like Meta and Google, providing resilience and eliminating latency.

“With the data centre launch, MTN is at the forefront of Nigeria’s digital space and ready to drive Artificial Intelligence (AI) needs across the country as we expand the capacity of the data centre facility.

“In addition, the data centre will enhance Nigeria’s data sovereignty and ensure that local data is hosted in Nigeria and protected from exposure and attacks,” said Karl Toriola, MTN Nigeria’s chief executive officer.