NITDA Pledges To Drive National Digital Growth Through Innovation

LAGOS – The National Information Technology Develop­ment Agency (NITDA), has expressed its com­mitment to fostering an innova­tive ecosystem that balances reg­ulation with industry growth by investing in cloud infrastructure, data classification, and AI appli­cations to solidify its position as a leading African digital hub.

Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, the NIT­DA Director General, stated this while speaking as a panellist at the Africa Hyperscalers Digi­tal Infrastructure Outlook 2025 where he gave deep insights on the Agency’s planned strategies in leveraging innovative solu­tions and regulations in actualis­ing the Presidential 8-point agen­da which cuts across all sector of the economy.

The Africa Hyperscalers Dig­ital Infrastructure Outlook 2025 gathered industry experts from the tech ecosystem to examine and explore Africa’s role in the expanding global AI-driven infra­structure boom.

Speaking on the Agency’s regulatory framework which ensures adaptability in an ev­er-evolving technological land­scape, Inuwa highlighted the NITDa’s two-pronged approach which are rule-based regulation and non-rule-based regulation.

According to him, rule-based regulation involves strict guide­lines for industry compliance while non-rule-based regulation allows for industry-led inno­vation with established bench­marks.

“Before we regulate anything, we need to be aware of the land­scape, we need to be intelligent, we need to have data and make sense out of that data, we need to be dynamic because technolo­gy is fast-changing and we need to develop that agility within the regulatory framework,” he noted.

The Director General, also not­ed that one of the Agency’s key initiatives is the Cloud First Pol­icy which was introduced in 2019 to discourage excessive reliance on physical data centres.

He stated that the policy en­courages government Agencies and private businesses to lever­age cloud computing, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and other digital solutions.

He also mentioned that while the strategy initially granted waivers for businesses to use pub­lic cloud infrastructure, NITDA has since pushed for local data centres to scale up their capabil­ities.

Inuwa, while peaking on the agency’s achievements, said that a major milestone in NIT­DA’s journey was its successful engagement with global hyper­scaler providers and with Goo­gle Cloud pledging to collaborate with local data centres to drive cloud adoption and establish a hyperscaler data centre in Nige­ria.

“The Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, met our president, Pres­ident Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Paris and the president shared his transformative ambition for Nigeria. The president said that he believes technology can help him to achieve all the 8-point agenda from economic diversifi­cation, national security, food se­curity, and infrastructures which include digital infrastructures with a focus on education and healthcare because technology can enable all of them,” he said.

He added that to further drive cloud adoption and investment, NITDA is finalising a framework that will mandate the classifica­tion of data, ensuring that cer­tain categories of data remain within Nigeria.

According to him, this move is expected to attract more cloud service providers and strengthen the country’s digital sovereignty.

While emphasising that Af­rica’s focus should be on AI ap­plications rather than building Large Language Models (LLMs), Inuwa disclosed that NITDA is also prioritising the application of AI to enhance governance, reg­ulation, and service delivery.

Inuwa, asserted that the agen­cy has identified 3 areas in which AI can revolutionise governance and business operations by auto­mating processes, enhancing reg­ulatory efficiency and developing knowledge management systems.

“The real power of AI is in ap­plication, not in building large language models (LLMs). We should focus on deploying AI to sectors like healthcare, agri­culture, and financial services, where it can make an immediate impact,” Inuwa averred.

In her earlier opening remark, Dr Nadu Denloye, Co-founder of Telnet Nigeria Limited said that Africa is on the cusp of a remarkable digital transforma­tion, driven by advancements in connectivity, cloud adoption, data centres, artificial intelligence, and a growing digital-native pop­ulation.