Nigeria is positioning itself as a primary frontier for digital investment in Africa by prioritizing digital sovereignty and domestic infrastructure.
Speaking at the closing keynote panel of the Datacloud Global Congress 2026 in Cannes, France, Kashifu Inuwa, Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), detailed the country’s strategic roadmap, anchored by the newly enacted National Cloud Policy.
The high-level panel, titled “The Role of Digital Infrastructure in National Economies,” was moderated by Mehdi Paryavi, Chairman and CEO of the International Data Center Authority (IDCA). Inuwa was joined by global digital leaders, including Ali Amur Al Shidhani, Oman’s Undersecretary for Communications and Information Technology, and Buddy Rizer, Chief Development Officer at IDCA, to discuss how robust digital frameworks drive national competitiveness, artificial intelligence (AI) strategies, and workforce development.
A central pillar of Inuwa’s presentation was Nigeria’s National Cloud Policy, which mandates a cloud-first approach across government institutions while strictly prioritizing local data hosting. According to the DG, keeping government data within national borders is essential to strengthening digital sovereignty, improving public service delivery, and building trust in digital systems.
To ensure the policy translates into seamless execution, Inuwa announced the establishment of a specialized Technical Working Group, comprising tech ecosystem players, industry stakeholders, and global hyperscalers.
The group is tasked with guiding Nigeria’s sovereign cloud adoption agenda, developing strict technical standards and governance frameworks and mobilizing the massive capital investments required to accelerate trusted cloud infrastructure.
However, moving from policy to reality requires physical infrastructure. The DG stressed that unlocking Nigeria’s full digital ambitions will require aggressive, sustained investments in localized data centers, cloud networks, broadband connectivity, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.
“Expanding broadband penetration, advancing artificial intelligence development, and deliberate policy implementation remain critical to accelerating innovation,” Inuwa noted, emphasizing that these elements are foundational to scalable digital services and macro-economic transformation.
Despite infrastructure deficits, Inuwa pitched Nigeria as an unmissable destination for global digital infrastructure investors, highlighting the country’s unique comparative advantages, notably its massive, youthful population, a resilient entrepreneurial culture, and a rapidly expanding tech talent pool.
He reiterated that the Nigerian government is actively pushing forward with regulatory reforms designed to de-risk the sector and create a highly enabling environment for foreign and domestic digital infrastructure investments.
The Datacloud Global Congress is one of the world’s premier forums for digital infrastructure, bringing together policymakers, hyperscalers, and data center operators. By taking center stage in Cannes, NITDA has signaled that Nigeria is not just looking to consume global digital services, but intends to build the sovereign infrastructure necessary to host them.