U.S. Mission Nigeria said Thursday it is backing a U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) deal with INFRAGORA Global Capital to study two proposed data centers in Lagos and Delta states.
The announcement came in a post from the official US mission in Nigeria X account on, which noted Africa’s small share of global data-center capacity.
USTDA is putting up a $1.87 million grant for the study. It will examine the technical and commercial case for facilities starting at a combined 60–70 megawatts, with room to grow toward 100 MW.
Lagos is slated for a Tier IV site built for AI and cloud workloads. The Delta center would mainly handle backup and disaster recovery.
INFRAGORA puts the full project cost between $650 million and $1 billion. It hopes to break ground in the second quarter of 2027 and is planning its own power supply using gas, renewables and batteries.
The centers are expected to hold more than 4,000 server racks, including high-density ones for GPU-based AI work, and will connect to submarine cables such as Equiano and 2Africa.
USTDA says the work should open doors for American companies selling AI software, cloud gear, networking equipment and cybersecurity tools.
Africa still accounts for well under 1% of worldwide data-center capacity. The Africa Data Centres Association recently put active capacity near 360 MW, or roughly 0.6%, even though the continent has about 18% of the global population.
Nigeria’s market is forecast to expand at a 14.2% annual rate and reach about 226.7 MW by 2029, which is why INFRAGORA is starting its broader AFRIDATA platform there.
Power, not fiber, is now the biggest bottleneck for data-center growth across the continent, industry reports say. Most projects lean on long-term power-purchase deals.
This Nigerian effort is the first stage of a multi-country plan valued at $2 billion to $3 billion. The goal is to cut dependence on overseas servers and build more local cloud and AI capacity.
Officials and company representatives signed the agreement and met stakeholders in Abuja.
Observers caution that frequent announcements alone will not close Africa’s compute gap. Reliable power, faster permitting and actual occupancy rates will matter more.
