Nigeria’s data centres face major test under CBN’s local hosting mandate

Nigeria is forcing its financial sector to repatriate one of its most valuable assets: data. Under a sweeping Central Bank directive, banks, fintechs, and payment companies must move their transactional data from overseas cloud servers to data centres inside Nigeria by January 1, 2027. The mandate sets in motion one of the country’s largest cloud migrations to date, shifting critical financial data from global hyperscalers to domestic infrastructure.