Nigeria To Curb $850m Annual Cloud Capital Flight With Lagos Data Centre

Nigeria’s growing dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure has come under renewed scrutiny amid concerns about capital flight, data sovereignty, and the country’s limited domestic digital infrastructure capacity.

Stakeholders have noted that Nigerian enterprises, financial institutions, and government agencies continue to spend heavily on offshore cloud hosting services, exposing critical national and financial data to foreign jurisdictions, while billions of naira leave the local economy annually.

Against this backdrop, Kasi Cloud Datacenters has launched its Lekki campus in Lagos, described as West Africa’s first hyperscale-ready, AI-capable, and carrier-neutral data centre platform.

The company said the facility is expected to provide a local alternative for cloud hosting and artificial intelligence workloads, at a time when demand for digital infrastructure is accelerating across Nigeria’s banking, telecoms, fintech and public sectors.

With the centre located close to six subsea cable landing stations including Equiano and 2Africa, the campus is designed to scale to about 100 megawatts of IT capacity upon full development.

According to Kasi Cloud, Nigerian organisations currently spend an estimated $850 million annually on foreign cloud infrastructure, a trend experts say reflects the country’s weak local data infrastructure ecosystem.

Commenting, founder and chief executive officer of Kasi Cloud Datacenters, Johnson Agogbua, said Africa has for too long depended on external digital infrastructure despite the rapid growth of its digital economy.

He said, “Kasi was founded on the belief that Africa deserves world-class sovereign digital infrastructure built for the AI era. For too long, Africa’s data has powered someone else’s economy. Today, that changes.”

Agogbua added, “This flag-off marks the transition from development into commissioning and operational readiness as we deliver world-class sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure, built in Lagos, for Africa’s digital future.”

While the development reflects growing pressure on Nigeria to strengthen local hosting capacity, governments worldwide are tightening regulations on sensitive data storage, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The project also aligns with Nigeria’s National Cloud Policy 2025, which requires sensitive government and financial data to be hosted within the country, a move aimed at improving national data protection and reducing dependence on offshore systems.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who attended the flag-off ceremony, reiterated the importance of digital infrastructure to Lagos’ economic ambitions.

According to him, “If Lagos is to sustain its Centre of Excellence status in Nigeria, vital infrastructural development is critical to achieving human capital development. The economic impact that infrastructure improvement has on nation-building cannot be overemphasised.”

Similarly, the federal government signalled support for expanding Nigeria’s digital infrastructure, with the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, attending the event alongside officials of the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority.

MD/CEO of the NSIA, Aminu Umar-Sadiq, described digital infrastructure as critical to Nigeria’s economic transformation.

He said, “NSIA believes in the potential of digital infrastructure to serve as an enabler and accelerator for innovation. We expect that the transformative impact of this infrastructure on the domestic tech space will reposition Nigeria.”

Stakeholders say that, beyond improving data sovereignty, the expansion of hyperscale data centres could strengthen Nigeria’s position as a regional technology hub, improve access to cloud services, and support the growth of AI-driven innovation across sectors.

However, experts warn that sustaining such growth will require a stable electricity supply, stronger broadband penetration, clear data governance frameworks and long-term investment policies capable of supporting Nigeria’s rapidly expanding digital economy.