Adegbiji: Data Centre Investment Will Grow Nigeria’s Economy

The Chief Operating Officer, MDXi, a subsidiary of MainOne, Mr. Gbenga Adegbiji, speaks on the business opportunities of data centre operations and the need for Nigerian government to take advantage of the opportunities to further deepen digital transformation. Emma Okonji presents the excerpts: 

Recently, some foreign data companies are showing interest in data centre investment in Nigeria. How will this impact on the Nigerian economy in terms of infrastructure development and job creation?

MDXi, which is a fully owned subsidiary of MainOne, is the data centre business of MainOne, and it was founded by MainOne in 2014, but it started operations in 2015. We have four operational data centres, two in Lagos, Nigeria, one in Accra, Ghana, and one in Cote d Ivoire. Recently, MainOne was acquired by Equinix, which makes Equinix the new owner of MDXi and MainOne. So the intention of Equinix to invest in data centre business in Nigeria, will impact on Nigeria’s economy in the areas of infrastructure development and job creation.

Equinix shopped for data centre in Africa to invest in, and it found MainOne as a credible company with global standard of operations and it acquired MainOne. As a foremost data centre operator across globe, the entrance of Equinix into Africa, through Nigeria, will drive a lot of infrastructural development and job creation in Nigeria. Aside Equinix, other data centre operators are also indicating interest to invest in Nigeria, which is a good development that will further open the data centre business in Nigeria for economic growth. Nigeria’s huge population is one factor that is attracting foreign investors to invest in Nigeria. The Equinix that I know, has its African strategy, which the company wants to drive through MainOne, which will benefit Nigeria in many ways.

The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, recently said Nigeria has moved from a mono economy that was dependent on oil, to a diversified economy in the area of digital technology. How will data centre expansion in Nigeria further help to diversify Nigeria’s economy?

Data centre has the capacity to drive diversification of Nigeria’s economy, because data itself is the next big thing that will propel growth of the Nigerian economy. New technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (AR), Internet of Things (IoT), Autonomous Driving that will be powered by AI, including 5G technology, are fast evolving, which means that more data would be generated, which will lead to increase in data analytics and this calls for more data points and data infrastructure like data centres. So data centres will play major roles in all of these and also help the Nigerian economy to grow faster. Government therefore needs to do more in supporting the growth of data centres across the country. This is an opportunity for Nigerian government to become an active player in the fourth industrial revolution, which is about knowledge economy. Government should take action to create timeline in achieving stable electricity supply in Nigeria and to rollout infrastructure that will drive data centre development in Nigeria. 

Recent statistics showed that Nigeria lacks manpower in the area of digital skills that are driving global economies. How will this be addressed in line with global demand for digital skills?

Nigeria does not really lack digital skills, but looking at the percentage of those with digital skills, when compared with those without digital skills, via-a-vis the population of Nigeria, then the statistics may be right to have deduced that Nigeria lags behind in digital skills acquisition. Generally, technology skills are scarce, which is not peculiar to Nigeria alone. The rate at which technology is evolving, creates huge gap between technology growth and the required technology skills’ growth, and this is a global challenge. We need to do a lot of automation to address the challenge, and government needs to encourage digital skills training and put policies in place that will make skilled Nigerians to remain and work in Nigeria instead of traveling abroad for greener pastures.

MainOne for instance, is training Nigerians on digital skills, through the MainOne Academy. We recruit fresh graduates and take them through the MainOne Academy, where we teach them new technologies and different certifications for six months to one year, depending on the course, and we graduated the last set of trainees about three weeks ago. With the training, MainOne is helping the society and the Nigerian economy to have personnel in digital skills. We integrate some of them into our company to work for us, while some get well-paid jobs in other organisations, and some of them even travel abroad to further develop their skills. So Nigeria needs more training of youths in digital skills, to fill that gap created by evolving technologies. Government can also give incentives for more companies and organisations to train Nigerian youths on digital skills.

Since the launch of MDXi in 2015, how has the centre impacted on businesses that offer cloud and internet services across the country?

To be honest, the impact has been huge and I am going to give specific examples. We launched MDXi in 2015 so that we can provide data centre and interconnect services to Nigerians. Before 2015, companies in Nigeria used to interconnect from London, but since we launched MDXi, many companies now host their data with MDXi in Nigeria and do their interconnect from Nigeria, which has helped them in saving huge operational cost. The MDXi enterprise business contributes more than 40 per cent growth in businesses for companies who host their data with MDXi. Before our launch in 2015, most businesses suffered from outages, leading to operational downtime, but MDXi has been able to address that challenge for organisations, which now leads to higher returns on investment. With MDXi, companies now enjoy data service availability and reliability. MainOne has helped a lot of businesses in Nigeria to develop into big Fintech companies that are currently driving the Nigerian economy. MDXi is supporting businesses and their customers to communicate faster across West Africa.

MDXi, Which is driving MainOne’s Data Centre operations, recently launched its second data centre along the Lekki corridors in Lagos. What must have prompted the expansion plan and how will it impact on the Lagos and Nigerian economy?

The Lekki Data Centre 1 was our first data centre and there was need for expansion after some years of operation, hence we established the Lekki Data Centre 2. Over the years, our customers expanded, and their demand for additional rack space in our data centre increased, which motivated the need for a second data centre in order to meet the growing needs of our customers. A lot of companies now run their main Information Technology (IT) services from our data centre and we need to expand because we have almost reached the full capacity in our Lekki Data Centre 1. 

Businesses are expanding and IT services are also expanding and we need to expand our data centre operations to meet the growing needs of our customers.

How will MDXi operations help to drive software development in Nigeria and reposition Nigeria as a hub for technology development?

 Software development in Nigeria is fast growing and we have Software-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service and cloud computing, where data is stored in the cloud, and MDXi provides the support service. MDXi has several customers who offer cloud services and Infrastructure-as-a-Service to their customers and they rely on MDXi to offer such services to their customers. With this, MDXi is providing real support for software development in Nigeria. 

Tell us about the certification of MDXi and its capacity to protect data in a digital era where hacking of data centres and organisations’ network is on the rise?

MDXi has certifications at different levels of operation. We also have the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS) certification that has to do with payments and this guarantees security to all organisations involved in offering payment services, that operates using the MDXi Data Centre. We also have the ISO27001 certification that addresses cybersecurity. To attain such certifications, requires high level of security standards, which we have built over the years and we are involved in periodic testing in-house, as well as penetration testing to ensure that we maintain the high security standard required for data centre operations. We also have Soc2 certification that deals with processes and measures, including operational efficiency.

What is MainOne’s future-build plans along the Shagamu axis in Ogun State and the expansion plan beyond the shores of Nigeria?

We have the Shagamu operations, which is our disaster recovery site for customers who are interested in handling their disaster recovery operations in Shagamu, which is some distance away from their Lekki operation centre, that will give them the geographical redundancy and the separation that they will need. We have fibre connectivity from Lekki in Lagos State to Shagamu Ogun State to host the disaster recovery site. From Shagamu, we service our customers around that environ. The Shagamu facility is not a data centre at the moment and we need more customers in that axis in order to upgrade it to a full data centre. The Shagamu facility is just a Point of Presence (PoP), servicing few businesses in that environment. For our expansion plan, we are looking at building more data centres in Lagos and in other parts of the country because our customers are also expanding and they are deploying services in more than one city. 

The new data centres that are springing up in Nigeria, will no doubt create market competition with the existing data centres in the country. Is Nigeria data market ready to withstand the expected market competition?

Competition in data centre business is good for the Nigerian economy and such competition is inevitable. Investors see the population of Nigeria and its potential and they are interested in enlarging the bucket of the competition and create a bigger bucket where everybody can operate. It is about expanding the data centre market and building more infrastructure that will enable the industry to grow. In data centre business, the opportunities are there and we need to unlock the opportunities. Aside the opportunities, there are also challenges, which are surmountable and investors need to understand that doing business in Nigeria, is quite different from doing business in Europe or Asia. This is because Nigeria is a unique market with its own peculiarities. 

How will you describe the acquisition of MainOne by Equinix, and what has been the impact in the area digital infrastructure since the acquisition last year?

The acquisition of MainOne by Equinix has opened doors for more investment opportunities in Nigeria. Investors were initially watching to see the first global investor that will invest in data centre business in Africa, but as soon as Equinix entered Africa and Nigeria through MainOne, other global companies are beginning to show interest to invest in Nigeria data centre business, which of course is now driving competition, which I earlier spoke about. Equinix entrance into Nigeria, turned out to be a good signal for global investors who now see Nigeria as a country to invest in, and investments drive development. Equinix entrance into Nigeria is also a signal that MainOne has a data centre infrastructure that is of global standard that could be leveraged upon for further expansion. It is also a signal that MainOne has a reliable ecosystem that can be developed across West Africa. 

Government must therefore understand the opportunities that are associated with the coming of Equinix into Nigeria and tap those opportunities as fast as possible. 

Lagos has reached advanced stage in its 3,000km broadband fibre optic cable connectivity initiative that seeks to make Lagos a hub for technology development in the country. How will MainOne’s broadband cable support the Lagos fibre optic cable initiative?

MainOne is open and ready to work with Lagos State government in the area of broadband deployment via fibre, since that is our core business. MainOne started a project called the Digital Lagos some years ago and the plan was to connect Lagos with broadband though fibre cable. The MainOne business will always complement what Lagos State is doing in the area of broadband connectivity. 

As the COO of MDXi, how have you been able to achieve a stable infrastructure management in the two MDXi centres, considering the amount of electricity needed to power data centres, vis-a-vis the poor electricity situation in the country?

Business stability is key for business growth and digital infrastructure development starts from the planning stage.

What we did as MDXi, was to first of all have a very good knowledge of our environment and to have a good knowledge of data centre operation and how best we can operate it in Nigeria, given the peculiarities of the Nigerian market. Before we started, I travelled round the world to see how global data centres are built and managed. All the ideas from that travel were brought to bear in the design and operation of MDXi. Firstly, we were able to design our MDXi facility to be resilient. Today, we have a certified Tier 111 data centre, but we have gone beyond the requirements of a Tier 111 data centre. The reason for that is because we understand the Nigerian business environment. We also did direct connection to the power grid, in order to have constant power supply, because we understand very well that data centre is about stable electricity supply. All these brought stability in managing our data centres in Nigeria, which led to customer satisfaction. We also developed our operational services that are tailored to our own environment. Again, we have very good and reliable partners, which gave us the leverage to have access to high quality equipment for our operations, which also added to our ability to achieve a stable infrastructure management in both MDXi Data Centres. We bought the best of equipment in the industry and that has brought about stability and reliability in our data centre business.