Nigeria’s new National Digital Cloud Policy will require federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to prioritise cloud infrastructure when building new digital systems and services, potentially making the government a major new customer for the country’s cloud providers.
On Monday, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy released the National Digital Cloud Policy, a framework for how Nigeria will build, regulate and use cloud infrastructure.
The policy is the government’s latest effort to reduce reliance on overseas systems and bring more of its cloud infrastructure in-country. Over 90% of Nigeria’s digital data and enterprise workloads are currently hosted on offshore servers, resulting in an estimated $850 million in annual capital flight. The implementation of this policy will expand Nigeria’s cloud and data centre market, projected to reach $782 million by 2031.
“Nigeria must move from being primarily a consumer of global cloud infrastructure to becoming a competitive location for the infrastructure, investment, skills and digital services that will define the next phase of the global digital economy,” Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, said in a statement.
The policy is a bet that collectively moving government systems to the cloud would make them faster and more reliable. This means that the government platforms Nigerians rely on to access public services, manage records and verify their identities could become less prone to disruptions.
The policy makes cloud the default deployment model for government workloads and requires MDAs to assess their existing systems and develop phased cloud migration plans. It also sets rules for where sensitive government and regulated data can be stored and…
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