Banks, fintechs and government agencies in Nigeria will soon have an official list of technology providers trusted to host some of the country’s most sensitive digital assets, as the Federal Government introduces its first national register of certified cloud infrastructure providers.
Beginning in October 2026, organisations operating in regulated sectors will be able to verify whether cloud service providers, data centre operators, managed service providers and Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure companies have been certified under the National Information Technology Development Agency’s (NITDA) new National Sovereign Cloud Initiative before entrusting them with critical digital workloads.
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The register represents a major shift in Nigeria’s digital regulatory landscape. Until now, financial institutions were required to comply with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) data localisation directive but had no nationally recognised mechanism for determining which infrastructure providers satisfied the country’s technical and regulatory requirements.
NITDA’s certification framework fills that gap by establishing a common national standard, an independent assessment process and a public register of approved providers that banks, fintechs and government institutions can rely on when selecting cloud infrastructure partners.
