The federal government has unveiled the National Digital Cloud Policy, a framework designed to strengthen Nigeria’s digital infrastructure and drive the next phase of economic growth.
The policy implementation has an investment target of $750 million over the next 24 months.
The Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, disclosed this on Tuesday, noting that the effort aims to further strengthen the transformation of Nigeria’s digital economy.
According to the ministry, through the implementation of the policy, the government’s initial ambition is to mobilise $250 million in private investment within the first 12 months.
The investment will rise to $750 million within 24 months, alongside progressive increases in compliant hosting capacity and the development of Nigeria’s regional cloud export market.
Digital cloud policy
Mr Tijani explained that cloud and data infrastructure are now foundational to artificial intelligence, financial services, digital government, healthcare, education and the wider digital economy.
The minister said Nigeria’s ambition is to ensure that the country moves beyond being primarily a consumer of global cloud infrastructure to becoming a competitive location for cloud investment, infrastructure, skills and digital services serving Nigeria and the wider African market.
According to him, the policy creates an open and competitive framework designed to attract investment into cloud, data centre, and AI compute infrastructure.
It will accelerate the government’s transition to secure, efficient cloud services and strengthen its capacity to host and export digital services across Africa.
“Our approach is deliberately open and investment-oriented. We want Nigerian and international providers to invest, build capacity, develop talent and serve both the Nigerian market and the wider African continent from Nigeria.
“At the same time, government has a responsibility to ensure that its most sensitive digital assets are governed and secured in a manner consistent with our national interests.
“The National Digital Cloud Policy therefore provides a balanced framework — one that promotes investment and competition, strengthens indigenous capability, modernises government and applies sovereignty requirements only where they are genuinely necessary,” Mr Tijani added.
Together with investments such as Project BRIDGE and 3MTT, Mr Tijani said the policy will connect the critical building blocks of Nigeria’s digital economy, from connectivity to computation and talent.
Institutional roles
The digital economy said the policy establishes clearly delineated institutional responsibilities to ensure its implementation.
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will provide regulatory oversight, standards and assurance, while Galaxy Backbone (GBB) will lead operational delivery, shared infrastructure and aggregation.
Also, the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) will ensure alignment with public procurement requirements.
“This separation of responsibilities is intended to provide regulatory certainty and avoid conflicts between regulatory, operational and procurement functions,” the ministry said.
A Sovereign Government Cloud Governance Committee, chaired by Mr Tijani, will provide strategic oversight and whole-of-government coordination for the implementation of the sovereignty framework.
The implementation will proceed through a phased 24-month roadmap, with the first six months focusing on policy activation, baseline assessments, implementation directives, institutional arrangements and investment facilitation.
Between six and 12 months, the government will operationalise the National Digital Marketplace, commence priority MDA migrations, onboard registered providers and begin regional market development activities.
The subsequent 12 months will focus on scaling government migration, expanding capacity, onboarding participating states, strengthening regional interconnection and accelerating digital service exports.
The policy establishes measurable performance indicators for implementation, including targets for private investment committed to Nigerian cloud and data infrastructure, installed compliant hosting capacity, regional capacity contracted from Nigeria, digital service export earnings, government migration, cost savings and skills development.
Policy priorities
The policy establishes four overarching priorities, including market development, regional digital services exports and government cloud transformation.
It will prioritise investment and market development while creating a predictable and competitive environment for domestic and international investment in data centres, cloud infrastructure, connectivity and artificial intelligence compute capacity.
The policy will prioritise regional digital services exports to position Nigeria as a hosting, processing and interconnection hub for West Africa and the wider sub-Saharan African market.
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It will also prioritise government cloud transformation by implementing a strengthened Cloud First approach across federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies, supported by whole-of-government aggregation, coordinated procurement and shared digital infrastructure.
Additionally, it will focus on digital sovereignty and security. It will establish clear, proportionate and risk-based requirements for the protection, residency and control of defined categories of government and regulated data.
The policy deliberately maintains an open, competitive and multi-provider cloud market, recognising that Nigeria’s digital economy will benefit from the participation of both domestic and international providers.
The innovation and digital economy ministry clarified that it does not impose general data localisation requirements on commercial data.
It said sovereignty requirements are narrowly applied to defined categories of government and regulated data where national control is necessary.
“A central feature of the Policy is the use of Government’s collective purchasing power to accelerate domestic infrastructure investment,” the ministry stated.
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