NITDA Boss Highlights Nigeria’s Digital Infrastructure Agenda At Datacloud Global Congress 2026
By Francois Giudice, Bureau Chief, France & Angeline Mgbele, Bureau Chief, Northern Nigeria
The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, participated in the closing keynote panel session at the Datacloud Global Congress 2026 held in Cannes, France, where he joined global leaders to discuss “The Role of Digital Infrastructure in National Economies.”
The high-level discussion, moderated by IDCA Chairman & CEO, Mehdi Paryavi, explored the role of digital infrastructure in economic growth, AI strategy, digital sovereignty, workforce development, and national competitiveness. The session featured distinguished speakers including Undersecretary for Communications and Information Technology, Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT), Oman, Ali Amur Al Shidhani the Chief Development Officer at IDCA Buddy Rizer and the NITDA Director-General, Mallam Abdullahi.
During the discussion, Abdullahi underscored digital infrastructure as a critical enabler of economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and national development and highlighted Nigeria’s ongoing efforts under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda to diversify the economy through digitalisation, technology-led development, and strategic digital infrastructure expansion.
Speaking on Nigeria’s policy direction, the NITDA DG emphasized the National Cloud Policy, which promoted cloud adoption across government institutions and prioritised the hosting of government data within Nigeria to strengthen digital sovereignty, improved public service delivery, stimulated the domestic cloud ecosystem, and deepened trust in digital systems.
Abdullahi 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.
The NITDA boss 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 and noted that expanding broadband penetration, advancing artificial intelligence development, and deliberate policy implementation remained critical to accelerating innovation, enabling scalable digital services, and driving economic transformation.
Abdullahi also showcased 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.
He reiterated Nigeria’s commitment to fostering strategic partnerships and mobilising investments that accelerated 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 convenes policymakers, investors, hyperscalers, cloud providers, data centre operators, and digital infrastructure stakeholders from around the world to shape the future of global digital infrastructure and investment.
