MTN Nigeria Launches Locally Hosted Cloud to Empower Startups and Enterprises
MTN Nigeria has launched its first commercial data centre in a move to strengthen the country’s technology ecosystem by offering affordable, locally hosted cloud services.
Speaking at a press briefing on Monday, CEO Karl Toriola said the new facility — the largest prefabricated commercial data centre in West Africa — will allow businesses, developers, and large enterprises to host data in Nigeria at competitive naira rates.
“Today, a lot of the time, developers go and get capacity from Amazon, which is priced in dollars. Your only other alternative to getting capacity from Amazon is to buy your own processing and storage capacity… and that is a very big barrier for new businesses to start in,” Toriola said.
“With the cloud service that is provided, which is priced in naira, you have reduced volatility to foreign exchange devaluations.”
He added that the local hosting would improve performance by reducing latency and eliminating upfront infrastructure costs for startups and fintechs.
Toriola highlighted data sovereignty and regulatory compliance as key benefits: “Hosting Nigerian businesses’ data in Nigeria and protecting them against the exposures to sovereign data risks in foreign states… is a significant advantage which we put into place.”
On competitiveness, Toriola assured that MTN’s services would rival global cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft.
Lynda Saint-Nwafor, chief enterprise business officer, said MTN will be the first in Nigeria to offer a self-service cloud orchestration platform. “From tomorrow, through cloud.mtn.com, you can self-orchestrate from anywhere in the world.”
