Calabar, Nigeria — Technology firm Nugi Group has unveiled plans to establish a Tier 4 data centre in Calabar, Cross River State, in a move set to strengthen Nigeria’s digital backbone and enhance its position in the global data economy.

Announcing the project, Ugi Augustine, President and Solutions Architect of Nugi Group, said Calabar was selected for its unique mix of natural resources, cost advantages, and first-mover opportunities.

“Calabar offers lower operating costs and a first-mover advantage,” Augustine noted. “The location also ties into the city’s tourism profile, being close to Calabar Airport and Africa’s largest street festival, the Calabar Festival.”

The Tier 4 facility, designed to deliver 99.99 per cent uptime, will harness multiple energy sources to ensure resilience. The company has secured land near a waterfall to generate hydroelectric power, alongside plans for a solar grid with three to four months of storage capacity and access to natural gas for additional electricity generation.

Nigeria’s digital economy—driven by fintech, e-commerce, cloud services, and mobile applications—has been expanding rapidly. However, with fewer than 20 Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centres nationwide, mostly in Lagos and Abuja, the country faces bottlenecks in data processing and a reliance on overseas servers.

Augustine said the Calabar project underscores the need for decentralised investment in Nigeria’s infrastructure.
“The future of Nigeria will always come back to Cross River, because the state holds resources vital for the country’s development. By building the data centre here, we are shifting focus beyond Lagos and Abuja,” he explained.

The facility is expected to generate significant economic benefits, including job creation for local talent in Calabar and improved service delivery for Nigerian businesses. By keeping more data within Nigeria, companies will enjoy faster and more reliable digital services while reducing costs linked to foreign hosting.

“This is a massive infrastructure project,” Augustine stressed. “A facility of this scale transforms Nigeria’s digital services, making them faster, more reliable, and attractive to global platforms like Facebook and YouTube. It also creates new foreign income streams while boosting uptime for banks and financial institutions.”