Telecom
Ready for African Data Boom?
Opinion by David King
Africans like their mobile phones, too. So surely the African continent will simply follow the same telecom development and usage pattern as the rest of the world, just maybe a little later?
Well, not quite. Africa has proven to be somewhat different when it comes to mobile telephony; Just look at the unexpected speed with which cellphone usage took off as it substituted for the lack of fixed-line networks and other key infrastructure.
Africa has always had myriad challenges for mobile operators and other telecom companies to overcome: lack of or substandard infrastructure, political uncertainty, regulatory issues, challenging environments, vast and sparsely populated geographical areas to cover, unreliable energy supplies and poorer target groups.
These challenges have been overcome with ingenuity and perseverance. Prepaid cards in small denominations sold in numerous mobile booths have given consumers with little money access to mobile telephony.
Off-grid base stations are increasingly using green power solutions almost completely replacing the use of dirty and expensive diesel.
Roaming costs are often lower than in the developed world, enabling communities separated by colonial borders to communicate. M-PESA and other mobile money systems have revolutionised the way money is transferred, making it possible for almost everybody to use basic banking services.
Africa-Next Market for Data Boom
It is no great secret that the next big step for Africa is the “post-mobile data revolution”. The penetration of data in African markets is still low, even in South Africa, and prices are still high. And even if everybody agrees that data will take off in a big way, it is difficult to predict when it will happen and how fast. There are of course going to be a number of challenges to overcome.
How can you best prepare to quickly respond to the anticipated demand without investing too much too early?
The biggest challenge is infrastructure. High quality, efficient data centres are essential. They house and power all the equipment needed for transmission of data and are both the heart and brain of any network. But traditional builds for data centres take a lot of time to plan, co-ordinate (with different suppliers) and construct.
Furthermore, challenging environments add a lot of risk to a data centre project, often resulting in delays and budget over-runs.
Buildings for data centres are often not purpose built to be used as technical facilities, often with water leaks and other problems, as well as being over-dimensioned since they cannot be expanded quickly and easily.
Pre-fabricated Modular Data Centres Ideal for African Networks
The solution is pre-fabricated modular data centres. They are quicker to deploy and will in most cases save considerable time and money compared to traditional brick and mortar buildings.
The facility will always be the “right” size since its modular structure makes it easy to quickly expand in response to changing needs.
More efficient power and cooling will make a pre-fabricated data centre more cost effective to run. And quality, budget and the time plan can more easily be ensured for pre-fabricated purpose built facilities, bringing predictability to the project.
A pre-fabricated solution also makes it much easier to customise the data centre for specific needs and it can be deployed anywhere. Let us take a look at a live example: Vodacom in Mozambique (a subsidiary of Vodafone) recently decided to deploy a modular data centre (the eCentre) on top of a six-storey parking garage next to its corporate headquarters in central Maputo.
The roof top turn-key deployment is a 126 square meter open space data centre. Vodacom needed to put the facility in place quickly, efficiently, and on time.
The pre-fabricated build reduced the project risk significantly because the construction work was all done in ten weeks in a clean environment (in Sweden) and the installation work needed on site was completed in only eight days, in total a fraction of what a similar local brick and mortar project would have taken.
Speed and predictability in challenging environments are critical issues in Africa considering it is the fastest growing mobile market in the world and the take off for data could be right around the corner.
Pre-fabricated, modular and custom-designed data centres that can be deployed very quickly, and easily re-deployed if needed, is yet another innovative solution to an African problem (or rather African situation, since there is nothing problematic with fast growth).
It is a solution that will allow data centre owners – internet service providers, hosting companies, mobile operators and banks – in Africa to act quickly and confidently towards a demand for data that might be stronger than any of us expect.
David King is CEO of Flexenclosure, a specialist developer of hybrid power systems and pre-fabricated data centres for the ICT industry.
King has decade-long experience from C-level work with many international high-tech companies, many in emerging markets.
Dinesh Balsingh, managing director and chief executive officer, Airtel Nigeria, has identified data demands and network connectivity access as two of the critical areas in which the organisation is actively innovating to further improve customer satisfaction.
Mr Balsingh made this revelation at an exclusive roundtable with senior media executives in Lagos. The event, which was held at Radisson Hotel Ikeja, brought together business editors, brands and consumer editors, ICT editors, and capital market editors from legacy print and the digital press for an elaborate discussion on the company’s quality of service innovations.
The special roundtable 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.
During the conversations, Mr Balsingh 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 Mr Balsingh and his team include Airtel’s ground-breaking AI-powered Spam Alert Service, which currently flags about 30 million spam SMS messages monthly; the NXtra Data Centre, which is set to go live in 2026 as the largest data centre in Nigeria; 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.
“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,” Balsingh said.
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
This roundtable forms part of Airtel Nigeria’s broader commitment to innovation, customer focus, and thought leadership within the telecom industry. As Nigeria continues to embrace digital transformation, Airtel remains focused on delivering multilayered solutions that match the speed and ambition of Nigerians.
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has tightened up the corporate governance guidelines for telecommunications (telcos) operators to enhance transparency, internal controls, and risk management across the industry.
Aminu Maida, executive vice chairman, NCC, who dropped hint at the inauguration of the 2025 Guidelines on Corporate Governance in Lagos, said that the new framework is designed to ensure long-term sustainability for telcos’ businesses, networks, as well as instill investor confidence.
Under the new rules, telecommunications licensees must implement balanced board structures, enhance transparency, and establish more stringent internal control systems.
Board members are expected to include executive, non-executive, and independent directors with demonstrated expertise in information and communication technology (ICT) and cybersecurity.
He stressed further that NCC now formally recognises regulatory officers within licensees’ operations as key contacts for compliance monitoring.
“Corporate governance is no longer a soft requirement. It is now strategically imperative, especially in a sector that is central to Nigeria’s digital future and exposed to cybersecurity threats, climate risks, energy shocks, and rising consumer expectations.
“A major highlight of the new framework is the emphasis on internal audits and risk control,” Maida said.
With the new guidelines, operators are expected to conduct structured risk assessments and empower internal audit functions to ensure oversight.
“The guidelines mandate submission of mid-year and annual compliance reports, which must be certified by the board of directors.
“Our goal is simple, to ensure that telcos’ boards and management are properly structured to provide reliable services, protect infrastructure, and respond to the dynamic challenges of the industry,” Maida maintained.
He noted that companies with robust governance frameworks consistently outperformed others in areas of service delivery, financial management, and regulatory compliance.
He pointed out that the stiffer measures may initially disrupt some operators, but that the long-term benefits would outweigh any temporary challenges.
“With over 200 million active subscriptions, the telecoms sector is now considered essential to Nigeria’s economy, supporting digital infrastructure across finance, education, healthcare, and government services,” the NCC boss said.
He further noted that the guidelines will be rolled out in phases, depending on the category of licence held, stressing that enforcement would be rigorous.
“Operators must view this not as a regulatory burden but as a blueprint for long-term value creation.
WhatsApp has unveiled new safety features to help users detect and avoid scams across group and individual chats, revealing that it banned more than 6.8 million accounts tied to criminal scam centres targeting people globally.
The Meta-owned messaging platform said the tools are designed to provide users with more context before they engage, particularly when they are added to unfamiliar groups or begin conversations with people who are not in their contacts.
It also disclosed that it worked with OpenAI in a coordinated enforcement action that disrupted a fraud network traced to Cambodia.
“In the first six months of this year, as part of our ongoing proactive work to protect people from scams, WhatsApp detected and banned over 6.8 million accounts linked to scam centres,” the company said.
For group chats, the app will now display a safety overview when someone outside a user’s contacts adds them to a group they do not recognise.
The overview shows whether the person who added them is in their contacts, whether other members are known to them, and offers tips to stay safe. If users want more context, they can open the chat; otherwise, notifications from the group will remain muted until they choose to stay.
This, WhatsApp said, is aimed at curbing surprise additions to large or malicious groups and preventing the spread of fraudulent links through mass invitations.
On individual chats, scammers often begin conversations elsewhere online before moving targets to private messaging.
To counter this, WhatsApp is testing ways to provide more context when a user starts a chat with someone who is not in their address book, giving people time to assess the legitimacy of the contact before responding.
The collaboration with OpenAI revealed that fraudsters had been using ChatGPT to craft initial outreach messages that lured victims into WhatsApp chats before directing them to other platforms such as Telegram to finalise the scam.
The schemes ranged from fake earnings tasks and pyramid-style rent-a-scooter offers to cryptocurrency investment ruses. In many cases, fraudsters built trust by showing fabricated earnings before pressuring victims to transfer funds into crypto accounts, following a familiar pattern of escalating from low-risk tasks to real financial transactions.
WhatsApp urged users to take time to review messages before responding, question any request that pressures them to act quickly, and verify the identity of anyone claiming to be a friend or family member through another channel.
The company said the new contextual prompts are meant to make spotting red flags easier and reinforce safe behaviour.
The tools are being rolled out gradually as tests continue, with adjustments expected based on user feedback and evolving scam tactics.
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