Nigeria’s Q1 2025 Revenue Growth Was 49%, According to Sunil Taldar, CEO of Airtel Africa
Nigeria saw 49% rise in revenue in Q1 2025, according to Sunil Taldar, CEO of Airtel Africa.
Nigeria was a major contributor to Airtel Africa’s impressive first quarter performance in the fiscal year 2025, accounting for an astounding 49% of total revenue, according to the company’s CEO, Sunil Taldar.
Taldar expressed satisfaction with the outcomes in an interview with ARISE News, pointing out that the growth’s base was strong across a number of markets and market segments.
The growth’s structure is excellent, which is why we are happy with our first quarter results. We saw a 9% rise in our customer base, a 14.5% increase in our output, and a 24.9% increase in revenue. This 25% growth has been achieved because of the growth’s structure,” he stated.
“All of our business segments have experienced growth,” he continued, “including the mobile business, which is growing at a rate of over 30%. Additionally, all market segments—Nigeria was growing at almost 49%, East Africa at 20%, which is a steady performance, and Franco at 16%.
Taldar explained the rise in data usage by pointing to the business’s ongoing investments in extending coverage and infrastructure. According to him, Airtel Africa has set aside a lot of money for data centers and network expansion, totaling between $725 and $750 million for the current fiscal year.
Data usage is increasing. As an industry, we are also enabling, and frequently—especially Airtel—we are investing heavily in building capacity, whether it be in our current site infrastructure or extending coverage, which is why the data consumption is increasing,” he said.
Additionally, he clarified: “This involves a substantial investment in our networks to increase coverage and capacity. Additionally, we are investing a considerable amount of money in the construction of data centers. Our current projects include the three data centers that we have announced.
One of the biggest of these data centers is now under construction in Nigeria, according to Taldar. A facility in Kenya has been fully acquired by Airtel, and construction is about to start on another in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
As we revealed almost a year and a half ago, there is one of Nigeria’s largest data centers, and building is presently underway. We’re investing a lot of money there. Two more data centers are available. In Kenya, for example, we have finished the land acquisition and work will shortly begin. The DRC is home to the third data center we are considering,” he added.
Taldar clarified that Airtel has a big chance in Africa due to the growing demand for data, which is being driven by network upgrades and advances in artificial intelligence.”
Africa is currently offering us a great opportunity, and we want to make sure that we’re making the proper investments because of what we see with this whole AI wave and the upgrades from 2G to 4G data consumption, he said.
One of them is on the network. The second is on the data center, which is, you know, making sure that we are prepared for this whole boom that we anticipate from the AI wave, for which Africa will undoubtedly profit. With that in mind, those are the investments we are making,” Taldar said.
