Oghenevwede Ohwovoriole
The federal government has unveiled a national digital cloud policy that will establish a comprehensive national framework to enhance governance and internalisation of Nigeria s cloud infrastructure ecosystem.
The Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, who disclosed this in a statement said the nation’s national policy on cloud infrastructure ecosystem would enhance the nation’s digital governance and growth.
“The Policy represents a major component of the federal government’s broader digital economy agenda and provides a coordinated framework to attract investment into cloud and data centre infrastructure, position Nigeria as a regional digital services and hosting hub, modernise government service delivery, strengthen indigenous digital capability, and establish proportionate safeguards for government and regulated data.
“At its core, the National Digital Cloud Policy seeks to translate Nigeria’s significant domestic market, expanding broadband infrastructure, international connectivity and growing technology talent base into increased investment, local infrastructure capacity, jobs and digital service exports,” Tijani said.
According to the statement, the policy establishes four priorities: Investment and market development; Regional digital services exports: Government cloud transformation; and Digital sovereignty and security, establishing clear, proportionate and risk-based requirements for the protection, residency and control of defined categories of government and regulated data.
A central feature of the policy is the use of government’s collective purchasing power to accelerate domestic infrastructure investment. Under the whole-of-government aggregation framework. Government will aggregate demand for cloud capacity from multiple registered providers and provide shared government cloud services.
“The approach is designed to reduce duplicated expenditure, secure better commercial terms for Government and create predictable anchor demand capable of supporting long-term private investment in Nigerian digital infrastructure.
“The policy will also establish a National Digital Marketplace to support coordinated and transparent procurement of cloud and digital infrastructure services, alongside dedicated cloud budget arrangements and an anchor-capacity mechanism intended to improve predictability in government demand,” the statement further said.