Nigeria Moves To Take Control Of Data, AI Infrastructure With Sovereign Cloud

AI Infrastructure With Sovereign Cloud has inaugurated a multi-agency technical committee to drive the implementation of Nigeria’s National Sovereign Cloud Initiative, with a focus on reducing duplication in public ICT spending, improving infrastructure utilisation and attracting private investment into the country’s digital infrastructure.

The Joint Technical Committee of the National Sovereign Cloud Initiative (JTC-NSCI), inaugurated by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF), will examine fiscal, procurement, financing, investment, connectivity, power, cybersecurity and data-governance issues affecting the initiative.

The committee is chaired by the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, while NITDA Director-General, Kashifu Inuwa, serves as co-chairman.

Speaking at the inauguration, Yakubu said the initiative was fundamentally about strengthening the government’s capacity to derive value from rising investments in digital infrastructure.

He said, “Our challenge is to ensure that these investments are properly planned, appropriately prioritised, fiscally sustainable, and capable of delivering greater value from public resources.

“The National Sovereign Cloud Initiative should therefore help us to improve efficiency and resilience, reduce available duplication, optimise existing capacity, and make better-informed investment decisions.”

Yakubu stressed that government should not necessarily finance or own every component of the digital infrastructure ecosystem, urging the committee to create room for private capital, competitive markets and credible long-term demand.

He added that sovereign cloud was not merely a technology initiative because its implementation cuts across public finance, procurement, investment, power, connectivity, cybersecurity and data governance.

“Sovereign cloud implementation is not solely a technology matter. It cuts across public finance, budgeting, procurement, investment, power connectivity, cybersecurity, data governance, and central regulation. No single institution can address these issues in isolation,” he said.

Inuwa, who described the committee as a major step towards strengthening Nigeria’s digital sovereignty, warned that excessive dependence on foreign digital infrastructure could expose the country’s digital future to external control.

“This Joint Technical Committee of the National Sovereign Cloud Initiative (JTC-NSCI) is a defining step for Nigeria’s digital future,” he said.

“Anything about the fourth industrial revolution relies on our digital infrastructure, connectivity, and computing power. Relying on foreign services for all this digital infrastructure means we are putting our future in the hands of these foreign companies.

“So, digital sovereignty is about building our capacity for digital self-determination. As a nation, we should determine our digital future. We should have control over our data. We should have control over our algorithms, our AI, and all our transactions.”

The NITDA boss said the agency was working towards certifying cloud service and infrastructure providers that meet Nigeria’s sovereign cloud standards, as well as system integrators that would support banks and government institutions in migrating their workloads.

He said the initiative would also introduce a cloud-first approach that could reduce the cost of running separate data centres and lower operational expenditure across government agencies.

The committee is expected to examine government ICT and cloud expenditure, total cost of ownership, utilisation of existing infrastructure, budget and procurement alignment, infrastructure financing, investment mobilisation and the fiscal implications of cloud adoption.

Also speaking, the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Dr Adebowale Adedokun, said the initiative represented a shift towards greater value for money in public expenditure.

He said the BPP was prepared to strengthen procurement compliance and support the development of an environment capable of attracting investment into the sector.

“Our competitors are not sleeping. Nigeria cannot sleep. It is time for us to use our collective understanding, partnership, and collaboration to secure our nation digitally,” Adedokun said.

He added that greater collaboration was necessary to maximise scarce public resources and enable Nigeria to compete with other digitally advanced economies.

The sovereign cloud initiative comes amid growing demand for secure domestic computing and data infrastructure as government agencies, financial institutions and businesses increasingly depend on cloud services, artificial intelligence and other digital technologies.

The proposed framework is expected to balance the need for stronger control over sensitive government data with the need to avoid costly duplication of infrastructure. The committee’s success will therefore depend on whether it can translate the policy into coordinated investment, lower operating costs, stronger infrastructure resilience and greater participation by private-sector providers.