Nigeria Presses Cloud Giants to Build Locally Amid Rising Dependence

Nigeria is pushing global cloud providers such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to build more infrastructure inside the country. The government wants to retain technology spending, protect critical services, and reduce dependence on overseas systems.

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has signed a regulatory framework for a National Sovereign Cloud Initiative with Galaxy Backbone Limited, the state-owned digital infrastructure company. This initiative sets policy, technical, and quality requirements for hosting government and business services in Nigeria.

The move is partly driven by the fact that more than 85% of Nigerian workloads have moved to public clouds, with only 22% of the country's 1,000 most-accessed websites hosted locally. NITDA director-general Kashifu Inuwa says this has created an opportunity for domestic investment and job creation in areas such as network engineering, software development, cybersecurity, and content delivery.