Digital Parks Africa has announced plans to build a carrier-neutral data centre in Lagos, Nigeria, marking its first project outside South Africa. The company, however, has not disclosed the facility’s capacity, investment value, location, or construction timeline. Its only specific technical target is a certification it has not yet achieved at any of its existing facilities.
The project, named Nigeria Data Centre 1 (NDC1), was announced on 8 September 2026 at ITW Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. Digital Parks Africa describes itself as the data centre business associated with the Master Power Technologies Group, which has operated in Nigeria since 2001. The company presents NDC1 as an expansion of its power and technical services into data centre operations.
Menno Parsons, founder and chief executive of Digital Parks Africa, said the investment “is much more than a new facility” and reflects “our longstanding commitment to the region”. According to the announcement, the facility is intended to serve financial institutions, banks, cloud providers and connectivity providers.
Beyond those intended customers, the announcement provides few details about the proposed facility. It does not disclose its planned IT load in megawatts, rack capacity, floor space, capital expenditure, specific location in Lagos, or expected completion date. It also does not identify any carrier, despite carrier neutrality being highlighted as a key feature of the project. For now, the announcement represents an intention to develop the facility rather than a detailed project commitment.
The announcement follows several other major data centre and AI infrastructure developments in Africa. In August, MTN’s data centre joint venture also disclosed no capital investment, capacity or construction timeline.
A South African consortium that included Digital Parks Africa previously claimed that 400 NVIDIA GPUs made its facility Africa’s most powerful AI cloud, although that claim did not withstand examination. Meanwhile, Vodafone and Cassava announced Egypt’s first national AI factory this week without providing a GPU count, site or completion date.
The release states that Digital Parks Africa has “engaged with Uptime Institute for the Tier IV Certification of Constructed Facility assessment”. The engagement was marked by a ceremonial signing with Tarik Bahanniss, managing director and vice president for Africa at Uptime Institute.
However, the wording is significant. Engagement with Uptime Institute for an assessment is not the same as receiving certification. Uptime Institute awards two separate certifications, and the distinction is particularly important because a project must progress through different stages before achieving constructed-facility certification.
A Tier Certification of Design Documents evaluates a facility’s design drawings, while a Tier Certification of Constructed Facility assesses the completed building through live demonstration.
Uptime Institute’s published award list for Nigeria shows 15 facilities with design certifications, while only five have completed the constructed-facility certification process. Just one of those five facilities holds a Tier IV certification: Galaxy Backbone’s data centre in Kano, a government facility.
No data centre in Lagos currently holds a Tier IV Constructed Facility certification. Commercial colocation facilities in the city that have completed constructed-facility certification, including Rack Centre, MainOne’s Lekki facility and MTN’s Dabengwa data centre, are certified at Tier III.
Digital Parks Africa’s existing facility at Samrand, north of Johannesburg, appears on Uptime Institute’s South African list with a Tier III Certification of Design Documents. The facility was reported as a Tier III site when it opened in 2023, but it does not appear on Uptime Institute’s constructed-facility list at any tier.
This means Digital Parks Africa is pursuing a more demanding certification than any it has previously achieved, while also entering a market where it has not yet built a facility. The target is ambitious, but the announcement does not falsely state that the certification has already been obtained. Rather, the company has commissioned an assessment aimed at achieving it.
Further details that would allow the project to be assessed include the facility’s specific site, planned IT load in megawatts, commissioning date and, ultimately, confirmation of whether the Tier IV Constructed Facility certification is awarded.
Until those details emerge, the key benchmark remains Uptime Institute’s published record: in 25 years of data centre development in Nigeria, only one facility has achieved the Tier IV certification that Digital Parks Africa is now targeting.
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