Technology experts have emphasized on the need for innovators in Africa to develop home grown cloud solutions for the continent in a bid to achieve data sovereignty.
Speaking at the launch of the UniCloud Africa- a Pan-African cloud platform in Lagos, they highlighted the potential risk associated with bridge of data privacy, stressing the need for local cloud solutions to protect data generated within the continent.
The CEO, UniCloud Ladi Okuneye noted that Africa needs to have control over the data it generates, saying that the newly launched cloud platform was designed to ensure data sovereignty in compliance with local regulations in the countries it operates.
“Our platform adheres to global standards like ISO 27001 for information security and ISO 22301 for business continuity, providing the trust and reliability required for mission-critical sectors like finance, healthcare, and government,” he said.
Keep up with the latest headlines on WhatsApp | LinkedIn
He added that the cloud platform offers local currency billing to eliminate forex volatility and ensure zero data egress fees for predictable costs to help both enterprises and SMEs strive. “Our enterprise-grade infrastructure, backed by a 99.999 percent uptime SLA and global certifications like ISO 27001, delivers unmatched performance and security tailored to African enterprises and governments,” he said. He highlighted the Artificial intelligence capabilities the platform was designed with, saying its GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) provides on-demand access to high-performance GPU-enabled servers, ideal for running complex AI models, machine learning, and big data analytics.
“This empowers industries like finance for real-time fraud detection, healthcare for AI-driven diagnostics, and agriculture for predictive analytics. Our developer-friendly platform aligns with global cloud standards, making it accessible to both local and international teams building the next wave of African innovation,” he said.
The CEO, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), Muhammed Rudman revealed the increase in the internet traffic of websites locally domesticated with .ng, saying the newly launched cloud platform will enable more internet access.
“When we started operating in Nigeria around 2007, the traffic to Nigeria was 0.1%. Almost 99.9% of the traffic leaves the shores of Nigeria.
“But having faith in Nigeria to start domesticating traffic, I can assure you today that 50 to 70 per cent of internet traffic of almost all the major service providers that are browsing, only 30 to 40 percent of the traffic is leaving the shores of Nigeria.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Success!
Almost finished…
We need to confirm your email address.
To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you.
Error!
There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later.
“We are able to achieve that because all the major big content providers in the world are in Nigeria. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, TikTok, Amazon are all interconnected to us. That’s why the huge traffic, 50%, is now domesticated,” he said.
Charly Bahous, a cybersecurity expert described the cloud platform as a digital transformation in Africa, saying it is embedded with security architecture to enable the safety of data privacy.
