ZAWYA: Why Nigerian banks, telcos and fintechs are invested in the infrastructure race ?

By Staff Writer

Away from fuel-subsidy arithmetic and exchange-rate headlines, three of Nigeria’s biggest industries have been running a race with no official starter’s gun and no finish line in sight. Telecommunications operators are laying fibre at an unprecedented pace, banks are pouring record sums into data centres and digital platforms, while fintech companies are building payment rails that now carry more value than the country’s entire GDP several times over.

Each of these sectors is building for its own reasons, yet all three are converging on the same underlying capacity: the compute, connectivity and switching power a modern economy runs on.

The telecoms leg is the most visible. In August, the Federal Government incorporated Bridge Open Access, the vehicle that will deliver Project Bridge, its $2 billion plan to lay 90,000 kilometres of fibre and extend the national backbone toward 125,000 kilometres, reaching all 774 local government areas. Rollout is due to begin in October.

Communications Minister Bosun Tijani points to eleven states that have eliminated right-of-way fees since 2024, though telecom operators note that hidden costs in several of them, such as education taxes and highway levies, blunt the benefit in practice.

MTN Nigeria’s half-year results, released in July, show why private capital keeps arriving regardless: capital expenditure reached ₦620.5 billion in the six months alone, invested in network expansion and fibre-to-the-home. Nigerian Communications Commission data put the country’s active mobile lines at 195 million in July, with MTN alone past 100 million subscribers, the first operator to reach that mark.

The data centre leg is quieter but just as consequential. In July 2025, MTN opened the Sifiso Dabengwa Data Centre in Lagos, the largest Tier III facility of its kind in West Africa, a $235 million investment currently running at 4.5 of a planned 9 megawatts, with room to grow toward 20. Rack Centre, Africa Data Centres and Equinix’s MainOne keep expanding colocation capacity around Lekki and Ikeja. Research and Markets projects the sector will grow from $288 million in 2025 to $1.09 billion by 2031, at roughly 25% per year, and become one of the fastest-growing sectors in the country.

Banks are matching that pace from the other direction. Ten listed lenders spent a combined ₦177.91 billion on technology in the first quarter of 2026, up 30.8% year-on-year. Zenith Bank nearly doubled its spend to ₦43.83 billion; UBA raised its budget 258 per cent. These sums buy core banking migrations, cybersecurity and, increasingly, purpose-built facilities rather than rented server space.

Fintech completes the picture. NIBSS processed ₦1.07 quadrillion in electronic payments in 2024, its last confirmed full year, with 2025 estimated to be meaningfully higher, around ₦1.2 quadrillion. Moniepoint alone processed ₦412 trillion in 2025, more than a third of NIBSS’s 2024 total. Flutterwave, Paystack, OPay and PalmPay complete a payments mesh reaching kiosks in Kaduna and market stalls in Aba, every transaction depending on fibre, data centres and bank infrastructure that can settle at machine speed.

Each depends on the other two: banks need telecoms capacity for real-time payments, telecoms need the transaction volumes banks and fintechs generate to monetise fibre, and every sector’s spending amounts to a wager that the others keep pace, one each has honoured so far.

The National Bureau of Statistics recorded GDP growth of 4.43% in the second quarter, the fastest in five years, with services up 4.6%. The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise has argued all year that productivity gains require structural reform, not stability alone, a case that applies to digital infrastructure as much as power or roads. The spending suggests corporate Nigeria is not waiting for government to make that case.

The risks are regulatory and financial more than technical. Right-of-way inconsistency adds real cost per kilometre laid, and much of this capital, from data centre equipment to core banking software, is priced in dollars and exposed to currency swings long after the investment decision is made.

Nigeria’s economic story has too often been told through exits; but its three most dynamic industries are telling a different one, building the next economy’s foundation at a scale measured in trillions of naira and hundreds of thousands of kilometres.

Copyright © 2026 Nigerian Tribune Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).