Nigeria took the initial concrete steps this month toward creating its own sovereign data centers and cloud services, as more African nations accelerate the digitalization of their economies with an eye toward cybersecurity.
Last week, the western African nation established the Joint Technical Committee of the National Sovereign Cloud Initiative (JTC-NSCI), an effort to expatriate data back within its borders and to break its reliance on foreign data storage and cloud providers. The sovereign cloud initiative is also designed to boost national security and help Nigeria create a deep expertise, Kashifu Inuwa, director general of NITDA and co-chairman of the JTC-NSCI, said in an Aug. 20 statement.
"As a nation, we should determine our digital future," he said. "We should have control over our data. We should have control over our algorithms, our AI, and all our transactions."
Sovereignty of data, technology infrastructure, and technical capabilities have become increasingly sought after by nations — not just in Africa, but worldwide. In part, the initiatives are a reaction to US legislation that can give the government access to foreign data. The past year's restrictions on exporting the most powerful AI chips and AI models to other countries has likewise caused nations to look to strengthen domestic capabilities.
The United Arab Emirates, for example, has worked with Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia and other companies to start building a large 5 gigawatt AI capability, dubbed Stargate UAE, managed by the Middle Eastern nation's technology service provider, G42. The United Kingdom has pushed for sovereign AI services and an AI defense capability after the Trump administration placed short-lived export restrictions on Anthropic's most capable AI models. Japan has partnered with Microsoft to build AI compute and data centers, the latest nation in the Asia-Pacific to work with hyperscalers to expand domestic capacity.