Nigeria Eyes $750 Million For Cloud And Data Centres As Digital Infrastructure Race Begins
Nigeria has set its sights on attracting $750 million in private investment for local cloud and data-centre capacity within the next 24 months.
The target falls under a new National Digital Cloud Policy, while Project BRIDGE is in charge of the connectivity side of the equation. The project will see 90,000 additional kilometres of fibre laid down so that every one of the 774 local government areas are connected by 2030.
Lenders have already committed roughly $845 million toward the overall $2 billion for a fibre plan.
A separate access programme will see the construction of about 3,700 new telecom sites to cover more than 20 million people who are currently underserved.
The skills side is growing as well. The 3 Million Technical Talent programme has attracted 1.87 million registrations, and has trained more than 125,000 people in cloud, AI, cybersecurity and software skills.
Taken together, the figures speak to the government’s interest in building more than just connectivity infrastructure. The combination of private capital, fibre infrastructure, wider telecom access and an ever-growing technical workforce is seen as the minimum base needed for Nigeria to begin to move from being a consumer of foreign digital services to a producer and exporter.
For this ambition to become practical, however, the infrastructure and skills pipeline need to grow at the same rate. The $750 million target is therefore one element of a much larger attempt to build Nigeria’s local digital economy from the ground up.
