Rack Centre: Nigeria's Leading Tier III Data Centre

Nov 26, 2025 0

With a population of over 200 million people and one of Africa's youngest demographics, Nigeria represents a rapidly expanding digital economy.

Rack Centre is West Africa’s leading Tier III carrier and cloud neutral data-centre operator. Since 2012 it has specialised in colocation and interconnection, offering customers a technically superior, physically secure and cost-efficient environment.

Strategic Collocation Agreements

Rack Centre, West Africa’s leading Tier III carrier - and cloud -neutral data centre, has signed a strategic collocation agreement with TelCables Nigeria, a subsidiary of Angola Cables and one of Africa’s most connected network operators. Through the partnership, TelCables Nigeria is deploying its high capacity network and cloud infrastructure together with four international subsea cable systems (SACS, MONET, SEBRAS and EllaLink) directly into Rack Centre’s carrier ecosystem in the region.

"Adding a global operator of Angola Cables’ calibre through TelCables Nigeria dramatically deepens our connectivity fabric. “Our unique Africa - to - Latin America route via SACS, combined with MONET, SEBRAS and EllaLink, gives customers the lowest - latency paths to the Americas and Europe,” said Fernando Fernandes, CEO of TelCables Nigeria.

Angola Cables is an international ICT solutions provider operating a 33,000 km subsea-cable network (WACS, SACS, MONET) and 50,000 km of partner routes, linking the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia. The company runs Tier III data centres in Fortaleza (Brazil) and Luanda (Angola), manages the Angonix IXP, and maintains 30+ PoPs worldwide.

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“Businesses in latency sensitive sectors: financial services, content delivery and real-time communications will experience faster transactions, reduced lag and an enhanced user experience.

EdgeNext's Expansion into Nigeria

EdgeNext is a global edge cloud platform specializing in Content Delivery Network (CDN), cloud hosting, and edge computing solutions. EdgeNext’s global acceleration network enables smoother, lower-latency digital experiences for video, social media, and e-commerce platforms, serving Nigerian end users.

“Launching our CDN and cloud hosting services in Nigeria marks a key milestone for EdgeNext,” said Terence Wang, CEO of EdgeNext. "We are pleased to welcome EdgeNext to the Rack Centre ecosystem as a CDN and cloud hosting provider," said Lars Johannisson, CEO of Rack Centre. Rack Centre's 13.5MW campus hosts over 73 carriers, ISPs, and network operators.

What is a Data Center?

Rack Centre's Capabilities and Standards

Rack Centre is the first vendor neutral data centre in Nigeria designed to the Up-Time Institute’s Tier III standard.

"We are delighted that we have attained one of the highest standards and the achievement of Uptime Institute Tier III Constructed Facility clearly demonstrates to our existing and future customers that here in Nigeria, we are meeting the highest standards at the global level. Rack Centre is the most connected Tier III certified and truly carrier neutral data centre in Africa, and we are very proud of this achievement." Ayotunde Coker Managing Director Rack Centre

Rack Centre provides truly carrier neutral colocation services, a comprehensive cloud exchange, hosting leading services for web hosting, IaaS, PaaS, DRaaS and content distribution networks. These services are delivered in the first and the only carrier neutral colocation facility in Africa to be awarded the Tier Certification of Constructed Facility (TCCF) by Uptime Institute.

Rack Centre is located on a 22,000 square metre site within a secure private estate in an industrial are, at the highest point in the area at thirty metres above sea level, reducing the risk of flooding. The power diversification strategy of the organisation complement diesel with utility and gas power.

Rack Centre is also an Internet Financial Exchanges Hub, serving the largest regional Stock Exchanges, Clearing System and multiple payment service providers. The top Nigeria and pan-Africa banks are now realizing up to 30% reduction in their connectivity costs hosting at Rack Centre.

Uptime Institute and Tier III Certification

Uptime Institute is the global authority for data centre certification through its Tier Certification framework and the standard it sets is recognised as the global benchmark for quality and international best practices in data centre design, construction and operations. This certification therefore demonstrates that Rack Centre facility and all its data centre elements are built as per the original Tier III design and engineering specifications and validates that it is meeting the defined availability of concurrent maintainability.

Rack Centre is a truly carrier neutral facility, the first colocation facility in Sub-Sahara Africa to achieve Tier Certification of Design Documents in May, 2014 and Tier Certification of Constructed Facility in April, 2017 with 100% uptime since the launch of the company in October, 2013. The indisputable stamp of quality by the global data centre authority is creating confidence with global and local businesses to host at Rack Centre.

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Innovation and Industry Leadership

Rack Centre is driven by innovation in all its activities. It has reinvented and led the data hosting industry in West Africa by defining a new level of quality that is recognised and celebrated on the global stage. The organisation has significantly raised the quality threshold for the data centre industry and as first ever Tier III certified in Nigeria; enabled Central Bank of Nigeria to mandate Tier III minimum quality compliance for banks to reduce systemic cost and high quality shared services for banks.

Rack Centre data centre is modular centric, which offers unmatched flexibility to move, add, change and retrofit the current footprint. The organisation currently has two data centres combined to become one data centre, allowing Rack Centre to economically scale based on customers demand. Capital investments are not tied to the subsystems of the data centre without corresponding occupation and utilisation of the facility by customers which means Rack Centre grows based on demands. Rack Centre will scale to 3000 racks and about 8.5MW. of IT power, total power demand of 15MW.

Rack Centre is now planning other locations in Nigerian and West Africa, as part of its strategic growth, strategy in foot print, carrier neutrality and comprehensive Cloud and content distribution frameworks.

Managing a world class data centre requires a thorough and continuous adherence to all operational guidelines no matter how subtle; nothing is ever inconsequential. That understanding made the rigorous TCCF qualification manageable for the Rack Centre team. All required TCCF qualification scenarios are part of Rack Centre design criteria and objectives. This made the process smoother as any flagged concerns were quickly addressed and resolved. TCCF further ensured that the site supporting infrastructure reflected what is contained in the design documents, which have truly been built and tested to attest compliance.

Rack Centre has been able to put Nigeria on the map for the data centre landscape. The key thing that the Tier certification has brought to Rack Centre is the credibility and trust of Rack Centre customers. It also brings investor confidence from the global businesses looking to invest in Africa. Because the organisation has been certified to the Tier III Constructed Facility level, Rack Centre is comparable with any facilities globally, and foreign businesses feel comfortable and confident to host their infrastructure with Rack Centre.

Rack Centre is also proud to have cultivated sophisticated local talent, highly skilled data centre talent and a learning culture.

Expansion and Financial Backing

Exponential growth in demand for data storage in Nigeria led Rack Centre to seek to expand its existing capacity, and consequently the bank approached Standard Chartered for a USD 11 million loan to fund the expansion project. Due to single obligor limits, SCB approached GuarantCo to provide a partial credit guarantee of up to USD 9.35 million to enable them to extend the required 5-year USD 11 million loan.

The loan will enable Rack Centre to double its existing data storage capacity and to refinance existing short-term debt with more appropriate longer tenor financing. The intervention of GuarantCo enabled SCB to provide the entire loan facility required by the client, enabling the expansion of the facility and extending the tenor profile of the businesses’ debt, allowing Rack Centre to better manage its asset and liability profile.

Development Benefits

The lack of cost and energy efficient ICT infrastructure is a major constraint to doing business in in Nigeria. Rack Centre will expand the availability of high quality/availability ICT infrastructure which is critical for ICT systems. This improves private sector connectivity and public sector competitiveness.

Vendor neutral datacentres play a similar role to major airport hubs. In the same way as multiple airlines interconnect and offer access to any destination, the vendor neutral datacentre acts as a hub for many Internet Service Providers, providing choice and resilience. As such, they form a critical part ICT infrastructure.

Rack Centre, based in Oregun, Lagos, Nigeria and owned by Jagal, a Nigerian holding company operating leading energy businesses and managing a diverse portfolio of investments, is a state-of-the-art data centre offering carrier neutral colocation, interconnect and Cloud services and providing over 6000 square metres (65,000 square feet) of energy efficient and secure data centre space.

Rack Centre provides a modular and scalable data centre, currently containing 255 racks scalable to 3000 racks at completion and access to all five undersea cables serving Nigeria with over twenty five carriers and ISPs. This ensures that all countries on the Atlantic coast of Africa are connected by a wide choice of high speed fibre. and South America at half the latency of South Africa.

Rack Centre has consistently maintained 100 percent uptime since the company’s launch five years ago.

Feature	Description
Tier Certification	Uptime Institute Tier III Constructed Facility
Location	Oregun, Lagos, Nigeria
Carrier Neutrality	Truly carrier neutral with multiple ISPs and undersea cables
Data Centre Space	Over 6000 square metres (65,000 square feet)
Scalability	Modular and scalable, currently 255 racks scalable to 3000
Uptime	100% uptime since launch