The Federal Government has inaugurated the National Digital Cloud Policy to attract investment, strengthen Nigeria’s digital sovereignty and accelerate the transformation of government services.
The Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, disclosed this in a statement made available to newsmen on Tuesday in Abuja, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Tijani said the policy provides a national framework for the growth, governance and internationalisation of Nigeria’s cloud computing and data infrastructure ecosystem, with the goal of positioning the country as a regional hub for digital services and data hosting.
He said the policy would attract investment in data centres, cloud infrastructure, connectivity and artificial intelligence computing capacity, while strengthening indigenous digital capabilities, creating jobs and expanding Nigeria’s digital service exports.
According to the minister, the policy is built around four key priorities: investment and market development, regional digital services exports, government cloud transformation, and digital sovereignty and security.
Tijani said Nigeria would be positioned as a hosting, processing and interconnection hub for West Africa and the wider Sub Saharan African market. He added that the government would strengthen its Cloud First approach across Ministries, Departments and Agencies while maintaining an open and competitive multi provider cloud market.
The minister explained that the government would leverage its collective purchasing power through whole of government aggregation, shared cloud services and coordinated procurement to stimulate domestic infrastructure investment.
He added that a National Digital Marketplace would be established to promote transparent procurement, while fiscal, regulatory and investment facilitation measures would be introduced for qualifying cloud and data infrastructure projects.
Tijani said the policy would also support cross border data flows, regional interconnection, international standards and export promotion, enabling cloud services hosted in Nigeria to serve customers across ECOWAS and the wider African market.
Describing cloud and data infrastructure as foundational to sectors such as artificial intelligence, financial services, digital government, healthcare, education and commerce, Tijani said Nigeria must transition from being mainly a consumer of global cloud infrastructure to becoming a competitive destination for infrastructure, investment, skills and digital services.
The minister said the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) would provide regulatory oversight, standards and assurance, while Galaxy Backbone would handle operational delivery, shared infrastructure and aggregation. The Bureau of Public Procurement would ensure compliance with procurement requirements.
According to NAN, implementation of the policy will follow a 24 month roadmap, with the Federal Government targeting $250 million in private investment within the first 12 months and $750 million within 24 months, alongside increased hosting capacity and digital service exports.
Tijani said the policy complements Project BRIDGE and the 3 Million Technical Talent Programme, stressing that the ministry would continue to work with relevant stakeholders to accelerate Nigeria’s digital transformation.
Leave a comment