Equinix Enters Africa, Acquires MainOne for $230 Million

World’s digital infrastructure company, Equinix Inc, has announced it has completed its deal to acquire West African data center and connectivity solutions provider MainOne for an enterprise value of US$320M, marking the beginning of its expansion into Africa.

The completion of this acquisition augments Equinix’s long-term strategy to become a leading African carrier-neutral digital infrastructure company by being able to bring a full range of transformative technologies and connectivity to Nigerian, Ghana and Cote d’Ivore.

This acquisition will extend Platform Equinix’s into West Africa, giving organizations based inside and outside of Africa access to global and regional markets. Nigeria has both the largest population and the economy of any country in Africa, with approximately 142 million active internet subscribers. Home to new innovative digital ecosystems in fintech and content and digital media, it has great opportunity for expansion of digital services.

Equinix believes MainOne, headquartered in Lagos, to be one of the most exciting technology businesses to emerge from Africa, and Lagos is rapidly becoming a key connectivity hub for the wider West Africa region

Founded by Funke Opeke in 2010, the company has enabled connectivity for the business community of Nigeria and now has digital infrastructure assets, including three operational data centers, with an additional facility in Lagos expected to open in April 2022.

Closure of the MainOne acquisition marks the latest in a series of strategic acquisitions for the world’s digital infrastructure company. Following the announcement of intent to acquire MainOne in December 2021, Equinix recently announced expansions in South America with its intended acquisition of three Entel data centers to accelerate digital transformation opportunities for local businesses and multinational companies.

Both acquisitions followed announcements to acquire 13 Bell data centers in Canada and two highly interconnected data centers in Mumbai through the acquisition of GPX India in October 2020 and September 2021, respectively.