The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, has enlightened the global community about current efforts by the Nigerian government to boost the nation’s digital infrastructure capacity in furtherance of its efforts to achieve the $1 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) target for the economy by year 2030.
Inuwa informed the global digital community’s representatives about the Nigeria’s ongoing initiatives to boost the digital infrastructure capacity during the closing keynote panel session on the topic “The Role of Digital Infrastructure in National Economies” at the Datacloud Global Congress 2026 held in Cannes, France.
The high-level discussion, which was moderated by IDCA Chairman & CEO, Mehdi Paryavi, and featured speakers, including Ali Amur Al Shidhani, Undersecretary for Communications and Information Technology, Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT), Oman, Buddy Rizer, the Chief Development Officer at IDCA and the NITDA Director General to explore the role of digital infrastructure in economic growth, AI strategy, digital sovereignty, workforce development, and national competitiveness.
During the discussion, Inuwa underscored digital infrastructure as a critical enabler of economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and national development. He highlighted Nigeria’s ongoing efforts by the current President Bola Tinubu-led administration to diversify the economy through digitalisation, technology-led development, and strategic digital infrastructure expansion.
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Speaking on Nigeria’s policy direction, the NITDA boss emphasized the National Cloud Policy, which promotes cloud adoption across government institutions and prioritises the hosting of government data within Nigeria to strengthen digital sovereignty, improve public service delivery, stimulate the domestic cloud ecosystem, and deepen trust in digital systems.
He further highlighted the establishment of a Technical Working Group comprising ecosystem players, industry stakeholders, and hyperscalers to guide Nigeria’s sovereign cloud adoption agenda, develop technical standards, strengthen governance frameworks, and mobilise investments required to accelerate trusted cloud infrastructure development.
Inuwa stressed the need for increased investments in data centres, cloud infrastructure, broadband connectivity, and emerging technologies to unlock Nigeria’s digital economy ambitions and position the country as a leading digital hub in Africa, pointing out that expanding broadband penetration, advancing artificial intelligence development, and deliberate policy implementation remain critical to accelerating innovation, enabling scalable digital services, and driving economic transformation.
He also spoke on Nigeria’s comparative advantages as an emerging digital investment destination, citing the country’s large and youthful population, vibrant innovation ecosystem, resilient entrepreneurial culture, growing digital talent base, and ongoing reforms aimed at creating an enabling environment for digital infrastructure investments.
In his concluding remarks, the industry expert reiterated Nigeria’s commitment to fostering strategic partnerships and mobilising investments that accelerate the development of cloud infrastructure, data centres, connectivity, artificial intelligence, and digital public infrastructure to strengthen the country’s position as a globally competitive digital economy.
The Datacloud Global Congress was attended policymakers, investors, hyper-scalers, cloud providers, data centre operators, and digital infrastructure stakeholders from around the world to shape the future of global digital infrastructure and investment.
