Nigeria’s Telecom Operators Spend Over $350m Yearly on Diesel – Report
By peterside Rejoice
Telecommunications operators in Nigeria are spending over $350 million annually on diesel to power their operations, according to the State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2025 by the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC).
The report highlights the country’s growing dependence on diesel-powered generators, revealing that over 40 million litres of diesel are consumed monthly by telecom tower sites across Nigeria. This heavy reliance on diesel is largely driven by the unreliability of the national electricity grid, especially in rural and underserved areas.
“A growing number of tower sites going off-grid or relying on diesel generators is a cause of concern,” the report noted. “It increases both CAPEX and OPEX, making rural investments more prohibitive.”
According to data from GSMA Intelligence, powering a mobile base station in rural Nigeria costs 37% more than in urban centres, further straining operators’ finances. The report also pointed out that Africa’s mobile broadband infrastructure consumes more energy per gigabyte (0.24 kWh/GB) compared to the global average (0.17 kWh/GB), mainly due to lower traffic volumes and reliance on older technologies like 3G.
Beyond costs, telecom operators are also grappling with frequent theft of batteries and diesel at remote tower locations, which adds further operational risk and expense.
The report paints a bleak picture of Nigeria’s energy landscape, where millions of homes and businesses rely on petrol and diesel generators due to the failure of the public power supply.
“Unreliable public supply has pushed millions of households and firms to rely on petrol and diesel generators,” it stated, emphasizing the urgent need for investment in grid infrastructure and alternative energy sources.
In 2024 alone, Nigerian telecoms reportedly spent around ₦570 billion on diesel from January to August—an average of ₦71.3 billion per month, based on earlier analysis by The PUNCH.
Airtel Nigeria, one of the country’s major telecom operators, disclosed that its monthly diesel expenditure stood at ₦28 billion, as of May 2024.
As the push for sustainability intensifies, telecom companies are now seeking ways to cut carbon emissions and reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
Harmanpreet Dhillon, Chief Technical Officer at Airtel Nigeria, highlighted the operator’s strategy:
“Our first goal is to connect all of our sites to the grid. Many of our base stations currently lack grid connectivity. Once we achieve this, we’ll reduce our reliance on generators, which in turn will cut down our diesel consumption.”
The report also pointed to Nigeria’s ambitious efforts to expand its fibre-optic infrastructure, aiming to improve broadband penetration through a public-private partnership (PPP) model. Currently, the country boasts 35,000 km of backbone fibre and plans to deploy an additional 90,000 km to meet rising data demands.
Despite these efforts, Nigeria still struggles to bridge the digital divide, especially in rural areas where high costs and limited infrastructure remain critical barriers.
The issue isn’t isolated to Nigeria. The AFC report identifies Nigeria, Egypt, and Kenya as emerging digital hubs, but estimates that Africa needs $7 billion in annual investment to close the continent-wide data infrastructure gap.
As telecom operators balance between energy costs and expanding digital access, the future of Nigeria’s telecom sector depends heavily on solving the country’s longstanding power crisis and accelerating the transition to renewable energy and next-generation technologies.
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