By BONIFACE AKARAH

Nigeria is moving to channel about $1 billion in annual government technology demand towards cloud infrastructure and shared digital architecture as part of efforts to build a domestic cloud ecosystem and reduce reliance on offshore digital services.

The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, disclosed this on September 9, 2026, in Nairobi, Kenya, while speaking at a workshop on “Nigeria’s Digital Infrastructure Opportunity” during ITW Data Cloud Africa 2026.

According to Inuwa, Nigeria’s strategy is designed to turn the country’s large public-sector technology spending into structured demand for cloud infrastructure, giving local and international investors greater certainty while strengthening domestic digital capacity.

He said that between 2023 and mid-2026, 326 federal ministries, departments and agencies spent ₦3.89 trillion, equivalent to about $2.9 billion, on technology investments.

“Government demand alone generates nearly 1 billion dollars annually, capital that officials now plan to direct entirely toward cloud and shared architecture to foster private sector agility rather than isolated public data centres,” Inuwa said.

The NITDA DG said the move was being driven by the gap between Nigeria’s huge digital demand and the country’s available computing capacity, noting that local data capacity was already operating at nearly 90 per cent utilisation.

He said the Federal Government was therefore using its purchasing power under a newly institutionalised Cloud-First Policy to consolidate fragmented public-sector IT spending and create an anchor market for infrastructure developers.

Inuwa also said NITDA was working to provide a more predictable regulatory environment for investors through a unified approach to compliance.

“To ensure investor confidence, NITDA is replacing fragmented, unpredictable oversight with a unified regulatory approach,” he said, adding that the agency was establishing a single-interface portal to simplify compliance across multiple government bodies.

According to him, the proposed framework would allow sector regulators, including the Central Bank of Nigeria, to adopt shared baseline requirements, making it easier for financial institutions to migrate core data to local cloud systems without facing repeated regulatory approvals.

He stressed that the framework was intended to create a healthy market rather than impose additional revenue burdens, with emphasis on competition and international interoperability.

The NITDA boss said Nigeria’s digital infrastructure market was also being supported by rising broadband and internet adoption.

He noted that broadband penetration had risen by nearly 10 percentage points to more than 56 per cent, while the country had about 192 million mobile subscribers and 157 million internet users.

He further cited estimates that every dollar invested in Nigerian digital infrastructure generates about eight dollars in wider economic returns, while the domestic cloud market is projected to rise from $376 million in 2026 to more than $783 million by 2031.

Beyond Nigeria, Inuwa said the government’s ambition was to position the country as a digital infrastructure hub for West and Central Africa, taking advantage of its geographical position and connectivity to neighbouring countries.

Under the National Digital Cloud Policy, the country is targeting $750 million in total digital infrastructure investment within two years, including $250 million in private capital during the first year.

The strategy also seeks to harmonise digital standards with partner countries and create frameworks for cross-border data transfers.

Inuwa said the broader objective was to give African countries greater control over how their data is hosted, secured and scaled, while creating opportunities for Nigeria to serve regional digital infrastructure needs.