Open Access Data Centres (OADC), a subsidiary of the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC), has launched its Open Access Fabric (OAFabric) platform in Nigeria, unlocking secure and seamless cloud access for the country’s over 200 million people.
Dr. Ayotunde Coker, chief executive officer of OADC, described OAFabric as a game-changer for Africa’s digital economy, designed to tackle long-standing barriers such as high transit costs, unreliable connectivity, and limited access to global cloud platforms.
“OAFabric is not just infrastructure, it represents a shift in what is possible for Nigeria’s 200 million-plus population. It enables direct, low-latency and secure access to global cloud providers, reduces costs, and creates an environment where enterprises can scale faster,” Coker said.
The platform, now live at OADC’s flagship Lagos data centre in Lekki, provides connectivity at scalable speeds of 1G, 10G, and 100G, allowing businesses of all sizes to connect to global platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services. It also creates open, carrier-neutral environments where networks, content providers, and enterprises interconnect seamlessly.
The launch of OAFabric comes as Nigeria accelerates its push for data sovereignty and localised cloud adoption. By ensuring data can be processed and stored locally, OAFabric aligns with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)’s cloud policy, which prioritises secure and locally anchored cloud services.
Beyond performance, the platform is built with resilience in mind. OADC’s infrastructure integrates multiple subsea cable systems, including Google’s Equiano and Meta’s 2Africa, alongside terrestrial fibre networks. During the 2023 subsea cable cuts, OADC restored Nigeria’s connectivity within days by rerouting up to 4 terabits of emergency capacity through Equiano, a move that sustained critical internet services.
Coker said this combination of subsea, terrestrial fibre, and data centre ecosystems underpins the company’s mission of building Africa’s digital backbone. “With OAFabric, we are replacing complexity with simplicity, high costs with value, and fragmentation with integration. This is the foundation for Africa’s AI-driven future,” he added.
Obinna Adumike, head of converged digital infrastructure Africa at OADC, explained that OAFabric reduces latency by at least 50 percent compared to traditional internet routing. According to him, Nigerian businesses can now experience as little as 50 milliseconds in connectivity between Lagos and major European hubs such as London, Amsterdam, and Marseille.
“This performance leap makes Nigerian enterprises more competitive on the global stage. Financial transactions, applications, and digital services will run more efficiently, and the 200 million-plus Nigerian market becomes more attractive to hyperscalers and foreign direct investment,” Adumike noted.
OADC is also scaling its Lagos facility from two megawatts of power to a hyperscale-ready 24 megawatts, making Nigeria a Tier-2 global data centre market. This expansion will support high-density compute for artificial intelligence workloads, cloud availability zones, and digital services that can serve not only Nigerians but also regional markets in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
