The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Nigeria, Dinesh Balsingh, has stated that telecommunications giant Airtel is investing $120 million in NXtra Data Centre, which is set to go live in 2026 as the largest data centre in Nigeria.
Balsingh disclosed this recently at a roundtable with senior media executives in Ikeja, Lagos.
The event provided a valuable opportunity for journalists to engage directly with Airtel Nigeria’s leadership to gain deeper insights into the strategies deployed by the organisation to address Nigeria’s growing telecom and technology ecosystem.
Balsingh, during the conversation, noted the exponential explosion of data usage across Nigerian cities, particularly Lagos, as rapid urbanisation, digitisation, and mobile-first lifestyles continue to drive bandwidth consumption at unprecedented rates.
“Cities like Lagos are growing at lightning speed—more people, more businesses, more devices. At Airtel, we recognise that data is the new oxygen. That’s why we’re investing heavily in 5G and fibre to build a smart, scalable network that can carry the weight of Nigeria’s digital future. This isn’t just about faster internet; it’s about enabling education, healthcare, commerce, and opportunity through reliable, high-capacity connectivity,” he said.
The event spotlighted several other advancements, such as the Airtel Business Network as a Service (NaaS) solution to boost Nigerian enterprise, collaborations with Starlink and OneWeb to deepen data coverage in remote areas, self-service customer experience products, AI-enabled user data and privacy protections, and the ongoing cashback programmes offered on the Smartcash mobile app.
Other programmes highlighted by the Airtel boss and his team include Airtel’s groundbreaking AI-powered Spam Alert Service, which currently flags about 30 million spam SMS messages monthly and the scale of education support projects like the N1 billion investment in the federal government’s Three Million Technical Talents (3MTT) initiative, Adopt-a-School, and the Reimagine Education programme which currently benefits over 1.5 million Nigerian learners of which over 880,000 are public elementary school pupils across the 1450 Airtel/UNICEF schools nationwide.
According to Balsingh, “Airtel Nigeria is responding with cutting-edge solutions to power the future of digital connectivity in urban areas as well as hard-to-reach areas across the country.
With the introduction of 5G-ready technologies and aggressive fibre rollout in major urban areas, he stated, Airtel is ensuring that Nigerians are not left behind in the global digital economy, stating that Airtel’s evolving network infrastructure is designed to serve the needs of modern consumers who demand high-speed, uninterrupted access to online services.
The roundtable forms part of Airtel Nigeria’s broader commitment to innovation, customer focus, and thought leadership within the telecom industry.