The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, has outlined Nigeria’s strategy for attracting greater investment in data centres and other critical digital infrastructure.
Inuwa spoke during a high-level industry panel on “Converting Digital Demand into Data Centre Investment” at the recently concluded ITW Data Cloud Africa 2026.
The panel brought together key industry players, including Ike Nnamani of Digital Realty Nigeria, Wole Abu of Equinix, Temitope Osunrinde of Africa Hyperscalers and Cherotich Kiereini of Oracle.
Inuwa said converting Nigeria’s rapidly growing digital demand into sustainable and bankable investments would require a combination of clear government direction, regulatory certainty and secure digital ecosystems.
According to him, government’s primary responsibility is to provide clear policy direction and establish a stable framework that enables investors and operators to make long-term infrastructure decisions with confidence.
He said regulatory certainty would help investors understand how digital infrastructure would be deployed, governed and consumed across the Nigerian market.
The NITDA Director-General also highlighted Nigeria’s strategic advantages in the digital infrastructure space, noting that the country’s potential goes beyond its large population.
He said increasing demand for localised digital workloads, combined with Nigeria’s geographical position, provides an opportunity for the country to serve as a major transit and connectivity hub for West and Central Africa.
Inuwa further pointed to Nigeria’s growing pool of technology professionals capable of developing solutions on modern digital networks as another advantage for the country’s digital infrastructure ambitions.
He said NITDA is also placing digital trust and cybersecurity at the centre of national digital development.
According to him, initiatives including the Digital Assurance Framework, the Cybercrime Act and the broader National Cybersecurity Architecture are designed to strengthen security across the digital ecosystem.
He explained that cybersecurity considerations now extend from last-mile devices to critical national infrastructure, with government information technology projects subjected to cybersecurity-by-design clearances.
Inuwa said these policy measures and security standards would provide the predictable and secure environment required to support further investment in data centres, cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The NITDA chief stressed that collaboration between government and industry would remain important in translating Nigeria’s growing digital demand into sustainable infrastructure investment.
The discussions at ITW Data Cloud Africa 2026 focused on how Nigeria and the wider African market can leverage increasing digital consumption to attract the infrastructure and capital needed to support the continent’s digital economy.
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