Airtel Africa’s Chief Executive Officer, Sunil Taldar, has disclosed that Nigeria played a pivotal role in the company’s strong performance in the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year, contributing a remarkable 49% of total revenue.
Speaking during an interview on ARISE News, Taldar said the company was pleased with the results, noting that the foundation of the growth was solid across various segments and markets.
“We are pleased with our quarter one results because if you look at it, the structure of the growth is very good. Over 24.9% revenue growth with a 9% increase in our customer base and about 14.5% increase in our output growth. So that’s the structure of the growth, which is what has delivered this 25% growth,” he said.
He added: “We’ve seen growth across all our business segments, which is mobile business, getting money continues to grow at about 30% growth. And all across the market segments, which is Nigeria at about 49% growth, East Africa at 20%, which is a consistent performance, and Franco at 16% growth.”
Taldar attributed the increase in data consumption to the company’s continued investment in expanding infrastructure and coverage. He said Airtel Africa had guided an investment range of $725 to $750 million for the current financial year, with substantial allocations to network expansion and data centres.
“Data consumption is growing. The data consumption is growing because we are also facilitating as an industry and often, you know, particularly Airtel, we’re making huge investments in creating capacity, data capacity, whether it is in our existing site infrastructure, or expanding coverage,” he stated.
He further explained: “This includes significant investment in our networks, to expand coverage, to build capacities. And there is some investment that we’re making, which is a sizable amount of investment that we’re making in building data centres. There are three data centres that we’ve announced, which is currently what we’re working on.”
Taldar revealed that one of the largest of these data centres is being constructed in Nigeria, with work already underway. In addition, Airtel has completed land acquisition for a facility in Kenya and is set to commence work on another in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“There is one of the largest data centres in Nigeria, is what we announced about a year and a half ago, the construction work is currently on. That is a big investment that we’re making. There are other two data centres. One is in Kenya, is, you know, we’ve completed the land acquisition, the work will start very soon. And the third data centre that we’re looking at is in DRC,” he said.
Taldar added that the rising demand for data, spurred by advancements in artificial intelligence and network upgrades, presents a significant opportunity for Airtel in Africa.
“Because, you know, what we see with this entire AI wave, and the, you know, the upgrades from 2G to 4G data consumption, Africa is at this point in time offers us a huge opportunity, and we want to make sure that we’re making the right investments,” he said.
“So one is on network. Second is on data centre, which is, you know, making sure that, you know, we are ready for this entire explosion, which is what we’re expecting coming out of the AI wave, which Africa definitely will benefit from. So those are the investments we’re making,” Taldar concluded.
Follow us on:
