From Cyriacus Nnaji, Lagos
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Cloudflex, an indigenous cloud hosting company, Mr. Aderemi Adejumoh, has urged Nigerians to tap into about N200billion investment opportunity offered by local cloud hosting.
Adejumoh made the advocacy at the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) Technology Forum 2021, which took place at Citi Height Hotel, Ikeja Lagos recently.
The theme of the event was “Achieving 30% Local Cloud Hosting by 2024
According to him “It is estimated that the Nigeria Cloud hosting market is worth between $100m – $450m (N50bn – 200bn Naira),” adding “More than 95% of that is with the Hyperscalers, (AWS, Azure & Google Cloud Platform), and outside of Nigeria.”
Adejumoh also disclosed that the cloud market was worth $1.7bn by 2020 and growing fast. He said South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are the major cloud hubs in Africa.
Still on recommendations on how Nigeria can ensure local cloud hosting, the Tech expert insisted that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) should have as part of its licensing agreement a commitment from the licensees that they will be hosted in Nigeria.
Speaking on Data Residency, Data Sovereignty and Data Localisation, Adejumoh maintained that with 95% of Nigeria’s data being abroad, the country’s regulators have no control or authority over the data, adding “With the Patroit Act, Cloud Act and GDPR – Western governments have more control and authority over Nigeria’s data than the Nigerian government and regulatory authorities.”
He also spoke on the benefits of local cloud hosting to include growth in the economy; empowering Nigerian youth which accounts for 60% of the population; increased job creation; encouraging the advancement in technology, Increase in local investment and increased technology infrastructure growth.
He stressed that a 30% increase in local hosting will increase the revenue by $30m – $150m (N15bn – N75bn).
Adejumoh added that with 60% of Nigerians being under 26years, the affinity to technology is a route to labour and economic growth in the country.
He called Technology an enabler and Cloud Computing the new oil, adding that development and advancement in technology and Cloud computing will accelerate Nigerians regional relevance and more importantly the leadership of Nigeria in the region and Africa at large.
