Nigeria launches an ambitious National Digital Cloud Policy

Details: Vaughan O'Grady; Category: Regulation; 19 August 2026; 692 views

Nigeria has announced what it calls a National Digital Cloud Policy aimed at attracting US$750 million in private investment within 24 months and positioning Nigeria as a major cloud computing and data-hosting hub for West Africa and the wider African market.

The policy, unveiled this week by the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, provides a framework for investment in data centres, cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence computing capacity, while establishing new rules for government cloud adoption and the protection of sensitive public data.

In particular the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, says the policy is designed to make Nigeria a location for infrastructure, investment, skills and digital service exports rather than solely a consumer of foreign cloud services.

There will be sovereignty provisions, but these will apply to defined categories of government and regulated data considered to require national control.

It’s a fairly ambitious plan with wide-ranging fiscal, regulatory and investment facilitation measures covering infrastructure, energy, capital mobility, training and more.

It also proposes cost-saving and efficiency initiatives like pooling government departments’ demand for cloud services from registered providers and setting up a National Digital Marketplace for coordinated and transparent procurement of cloud and digital infrastructure services.

In addition there are numerous performance targets touching on capacity, export earnings, cost savings and skills development among other areas.

The institutional responsibilities have been separated, with one group to manage regulatory oversight, standards and assurance, another to handle operational delivery, shared infrastructure and aggregation and a third to ensure compliance with public procurement rules. Overseeing the sovereignty framework will be a committee run by the minister.

As Nigeria’s Punch news service explains, there will be a number of implementation phases over the 24 months, starting with policy activation, baseline assessments, institutional arrangements and investment facilitation, moving on to the launch of the National Digital Marketplace and beginning priority ministry, department and agency migrations and onboarding registered providers.

The final phase will involve scaling government migration, expanding infrastructure, onboarding participating states, strengthening regional interconnection and increasing digital service exports.

This policy is said to complement the government’s Project BRIDGE, a rollout of 90,000 kilometres of fibre-optic infrastructure, and the IT skills development plan called the 3 Million Technical Talent programme.