Nigeria’s data localisation conversation has reopened an important question about the country’s digital infrastructure readiness: Can critical financial, enterprise, public-sector and AI workloads be hosted locally at scale?
For Gbenga Adegbiji, chief executive officer of Geniserve, a digital infrastructure construction firm, the answer is not that Nigeria lacks capacity. Rather, Nigeria is entering a new phase in which its existing computing, data centres, cloud, connectivity and power reforms must be coordinated more deliberately to support sustainable digital growth.
In this interview with ROYAL IBEH, Adegbiji discusses the Central Bank of Nigeria’s data localisation directive, the readiness of local data centres, the importance of infrastructure sovereignty, Nigeria’s power-sector reforms, Project Bridge, sovereign cloud domiciliation efforts, and why the country’s digital transformation requires participation from government, regulators, DFIs, cloud providers, network operators, financial institutions and the private sector. Excerpts…
The localisation directive has sparked a major debate about whether Nigeria is ready to host critical financial data locally. What does this policy signal to you?
