Data centres are becoming central to Nigeria’s digital economy, supporting key sectors such as healthcare, finance, agriculture and energy. At the forefront of this transformation is Oluwatosin Oladayo Aramide, a Nigerian engineer whose career in global technology companies is now shaping the country’s artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
With over 16 years of experience in enterprise systems, cloud and data centres, Aramide has led projects that influence today’s AI workloads. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), he contributed to reducing site deployment times from two weeks to eight hours. At NetApp, he developed congestion-free Ethernet fabrics that addressed long-standing challenges in large-scale data storage.
A senior consultant working on Nigeria’s AI roadmap noted, “Nigeria cannot adopt artificial intelligence without resilient and secure data centres. Aramide’s frameworks gave us confidence that we can deploy at scale and stay aligned with global standards.”
Nigeria is now expanding Tier III and Tier IV facilities in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. These facilities are being designed to serve as AI laboratories, supporting hospitals with diagnostic tools, banks with fraud detection systems, farmers with predictive crop solutions, and energy providers with real-time grid monitoring.
Aramide’s approach prioritises security and automation. His “automation-first” model allows infrastructure to self-provision, detect anomalies, and resolve faults with minimal disruption. In a country where power shortages and cyber risks are constant, such models are seen as essential.
His work has also informed national policy. References to his contributions appear in the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which identifies infrastructure readiness and interoperability as priorities.
For Aramide, the focus extends beyond technology. “The true test of innovation is when it becomes replicable, transferable, and adaptable to local contexts,” he wrote in earlier research.
As Nigeria develops its AI capacity, expertise from professionals like Aramide highlights the return of global skills to national growth, strengthening the country’s position as a future AI hub in Africa.
