Africa’s digital sovereignty will depend on building interoperable regional cloud infrastructure rather than isolated national systems, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Director General of Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), said during a fireside session at GITEX Africa in Marrakech, when he called for a continental cloud of clouds to secure Africa digital future.
Despite representing about 19% of the global population, Africa accounts for only about 0.6% of global data center capacity, underscoring the urgency of scaling cloud infrastructure across the continent.
To close this gap, Inuwa called for the development of a continental “cloud of clouds” framework that would connect national infrastructure platforms into interoperable regional systems, enabling countries to retain control over sensitive datasets while allowing trusted cross-border data flows where economic value can be created.
This cloud of clouds approach, he reiterated, draws lessons from Europe’s coordinated regulatory architecture, including GDPR, the Digital Services Act, the Data Governance Act, and the federated infrastructure model emerging under Gaia-X, which together provide a foundation for trusted digital ecosystems across multiple jurisdictions.
Across Africa, similar building blocks are already emerging. Many countries are introducing national data protection laws, while initiatives such as the Smart Africa Trust Alliance are working to establish interoperability frameworks for digital identity and trusted transactions. At the continental level, the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol is expected to support harmonized rules governing digital commerce, payments, and cross-border services.
However, Inuwa warned that frameworks alone are not enough.
“We need to start executing,” he said, calling for investment in continental-scale digital highways capable of connecting infrastructure platforms across borders and enabling African economies to capture value from the data they generate.
Under such a model, sensitive financial and identity data could remain within national jurisdictions while metadata and service-layer traffic move regionally to support digital markets operating at continental scale.
Without coordinated execution, he cautioned, Africa risks missing its opportunity to participate meaningfully in the next phase of global technological transformation.
“The cost of not acting is that we lose out in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” he stressed.
The argument that a continental cloud of clouds will secure Africa digital future reflects growing recognition that national cloud strategies alone cannot support the scale of infrastructure required to serve continental digital economies.
Instead, governments increasingly need to aggregate demand across markets to justify investment in hyperscale platforms capable of supporting AI workloads, financial infrastructure systems, and public-sector digital services.
