LAGOS, April 7 – Nigerian companies are spending about $850 million each year on foreign cloud services, tying critical digital infrastructure to systems located outside the country.
The scale of that dependence came into focus in March 2026, when drone strikes hit Amazon Web Services facilities in the UAE and Bahrain. Although Nigeria did not record outages, with banking apps, fintech platforms, and government systems remaining operational, the incident has drawn attention to the country’s reliance on infrastructure in regions exposed to geopolitical tensions.
Much of Nigeria’s digital activity, including payments, e-commerce, and public services, runs on cloud systems hosted in Europe, the United States, South Africa, and parts of the Middle East.
Fintech firms such as Flutterwave and Paystack process large transaction volumes daily using offshore infrastructure, while banks depend on similar systems for core operations and analytics.
Industry players say the limited disruption reflects how modern cloud systems are structured, with workloads distributed across multiple regions to ensure continuity. However, these backup systems are often located outside Africa, meaning that even resilient architectures remain exposed to external shocks.
At the same time, efforts to build local capacity are gaining ground. MTN Nigeria has launched a $150 million Tier III data centre in Lagos, part of a broader $285 million investment, while Airtel Nigeria is developing a 38MW facility to support enterprise and government demand. Other operators, including Rack Centre, Open Access Data Centres, and MainOne, are also expanding infrastructure.
Despite these developments, Nigeria still operates fewer than two dozen data centres, most concentrated in Lagos, with operators facing persistent power challenges that increase costs.
Africa accounts for roughly one percent of global cloud usage, and Nigeria, despite its growing digital economy, does not yet host a full cloud region from major global providers.
