The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, has said Nigeria’s National Cloud infrastructure strategy aims to turn regulatory mandates into investable demand and attract private capital.
Speaking at ITW Data Cloud Africa 2026 in Nairobi, Inuwa said Nigeria is shifting from traditional regulation to actively enabling digital markets
He identified five pillars of the digital ecosystem: higher institutions, entrepreneurs, corporations, risk capital and government.
Inuwa said NITDA’s focus is increasingly on market creation, local innovation and consumer protection.
He cited the Central Bank of Nigeria’s domestic-processing directive as an example of demand generation, saying the National Digital Cloud Policy provides clearer investment pathways for local data centres and talent development.
Addressing concerns about power and compliance, he said operators could use renewable energy, gas-fired plants or independent power agreements, alongside hybrid cloud systems that keep sensitive data locally while using public cloud capacity for processing.
He said localisation requirements mainly cover sovereign data, including financial, health and intelligence records.
Inuwa highlighted opportunities in connectivity, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Project Link is expanding broadband access, while the National Sovereign Cloud Initiative will support local AI workloads.
He said Nigeria’s progress was reflected in its ranking among the world’s top 35 countries for AI governance and policy, and urged investors to partner with the country to build secure, scalable digital infrastructure for Nigeria and Africa.
