Nigeria’s growing cloud economy, estimated at $850 million in annual spending on foreign cloud infrastructure, could become a major driver of domestic wealth creation if the country is able to capture more of the economic value generated by its digital demand, AI infrastructure expert Oluwaseyi Ayodeji has said.
Ayodeji, who has decades of experience in technology and previously worked as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), said the scale of Nigeria’s cloud spending should prompt a broader conversation about who benefits from the country’s rapidly expanding digital economy.
He noted that the $850 million figure, which has been cited by industry executives and reported widely, is an industry estimate rather than an official national statistic published by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) or the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
According to him, however, the figure remains significant because it points to the scale of economic activity being generated by Nigerian demand for cloud infrastructure, much of which is currently provided by global technology companies.
Ayodeji, who is also the founder of Regal Stack, a think tank focused on Africa’s sovereign participation in the global AI economy, said the issue was not whether Nigerian businesses should use international cloud providers, but how much of the value created around that consumption could be retained within the country.
‘Nigerian businesses need reliable infrastructure, and global cloud providers have played an important role in making advanced computing available to the market,’ he said.
He argued that the more important question was what happens around Nigeria’s cloud spending, particularly the extent to which Nigerian companies, workers, infrastructure providers, energy suppliers and professional-services firms participate in the resulting economic activity.
His comments come against the backdrop of Nigeria’s National Digital Cloud Policy, which seeks to attract $250 million in private investment within its first 12 months and $750 million within 24 months, while positioning the country as a regional hub for digital services.
Ayodeji said the investment targets were important but should not be confused with the amount of economic value ultimately retained in Nigeria.
He explained that a major data-centre investment could involve imported equipment, foreign financing and specialist engineering services sourced internationally. However, such projects could still generate significant domestic economic activity through construction, electrical and mechanical engineering, fibre connectivity, security, maintenance, energy supply and professional services.
He therefore called for greater emphasis on measuring the economic ecosystem created around digital infrastructure investments.
According to him, indicators such as local procurement, Nigerian employment and payroll, domestic professional services, tax contributions, energy consumption, connectivity expenditure and the participation of Nigerian companies in construction and operations should form part of the assessment.
Ayodeji also identified digital-services exports as an important metric for determining whether Nigeria is moving beyond being a consumer of digital infrastructure.
He noted that when Nigerian-based cloud infrastructure serves customers in other African markets, the resulting revenue represents an export of digital services and could strengthen Nigeria’s position as a regional technology hub.
‘If a Nigerian data centre serves customers in Ghana, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire or elsewhere in Africa, the resulting revenue is not simply domestic consumption. It is an export of digital services,’ he said.
He added that Nigeria should therefore look beyond building infrastructure for its domestic market and explore how data centres and cloud platforms could support companies delivering digital products and services across Africa and globally.
On the potential for local cloud infrastructure to reduce costs for Nigerian businesses, Ayodeji said the impact should be measured against actual workloads rather than headline prices.
He noted that a meaningful comparison would need to consider computing, storage, data transfer, latency, connectivity and reliability.
The broader objective, he said, should be to transform digital infrastructure from an enabler of technology consumption into an engine of economic multiplication.
Nigeria, he argued, should use the expansion of its cloud infrastructure to strengthen domestic technology supply chains, create opportunities for Nigerian engineers and technical professionals, support companies developing products for African and international markets and expand local participation in infrastructure ownership and operations.
Ayodeji said the country’s digital transformation had historically been assessed largely through adoption indicators, including internet penetration, digital payments and the digitisation of government services.
The next phase, he argued, should focus more directly on the economic value generated by that digital infrastructure.
For Nigeria’s National Digital Cloud Policy, he said, implementation would ultimately determine whether the initiative becomes an infrastructure programme or the foundation for a broader digital economy.
He said the country should establish a clear framework for tracking how much value its growing demand for cloud and digital infrastructure generates domestically.
‘If $850 million is indeed flowing annually into cloud services, Nigeria should know what portion of that spending is creating Nigerian jobs, Nigerian businesses, Nigerian tax revenue, Nigerian infrastructure and Nigerian exports,’ Ayodeji said.
He stressed that the objective should not be to keep every dollar generated by the digital economy within Nigeria, but to ensure that the country captures sufficient value from its growing digital market.
‘The cloud economy is already here. The real competition is over who benefits from it,’ he said.
Ayodeji’s work through Regal Stack focuses on Africa’s participation in the global AI economy, with emphasis on the infrastructure, policy and economic questions shaping the continent’s digital future.