Global payments services company Visa Inc., is planning to develop a data center in Nigeria.
Revealed by Visa's regional president for central & eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Andrew Torre, the data center is in addition to $1 billion the company has already invested in the country.
Torre noted that while the company "has been making investments and will continue to make these investments in Nigeria,” the company hopes that a data center will help bring new technologies to the Nigerian market and support its digital economy.
Torre added that partners of the company, including Hugo and Samsung, require Visa technologies to launch mobile payment services in the country.
Details about the data center have not been shared, including its location. DCD has contacted Visa for more information.
Visa has also invested $200 million in Interswitch, an African payment technology company, and is partnering with ThriveAgric, a company that uses technology to help smallholder farmers.
Nigeria's Vice President Kashima Shettima added: "Nigeria is where the action is. Of the ten fintechs in Africa, about eight are in Nigeria, with Moniepoint as the newest addition. Agriculture is key to the 8-point agenda of the present administration. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is really keen on repositioning the agriculture industry here, and we have to invest in technology, we have to invest in modernization.
“If we must improve on agriculture, we must embrace modernity, improve agricultural prices, seeds, fertilization, and intermediate technology. ThriveAgriculture is a company that has a focus on food security, providing up-to-date data to our farmers. And be rest assured that the patronage, the partnership between the government of Nigeria and Visa will only grow by leaps and bounds.”
Visa has four data centers - two in the US, one in the UK, and one in Singapore. The UK and Singapore data centers were first announced in 2017. In 2022, Visa announced that its Virginia data center would be powered by 100 percent solar energy.
The majority of data centers in Nigeria are located around Lagos, with a smaller market in the capital city Abuja. Operators include Layer3, MTN, Rack Centre, Digital Realty, Africa Data Centres, and NTT GDC. Nxtra and Benue Digital Infrastructure are also developing data centers in the country.
In December of last year, Huawei launched a cloud region in Nigeria, of which the United Bank for Africa is a customer.
