NITDA Moves To End Regulatory Bottlenecks, Pushes Single-Window Framework For Africa's Digital Investments

The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has called for a unified regulatory framework across Africa to dismantle bureaucratic bottlenecks, overlapping mandates and licensing delays that continue to frustrate digital infrastructure investments. Inuwa made the call while speaking at a Regulatory Roundtable on 'Regulations that Builds: Aligning Policy and Digital Infrastructure Investment Priorities' at the ITW Data Cloud Africa 2026 event in Nairobi, Kenya. The NITDA Director-General said investors should not be forced to navigate a maze of government agencies before establishing or expanding their businesses, stressing that governments must present a coordinated and predictable regulatory environment. According to him, government agencies must work together internally to create a single regulatory interface that eliminates duplication, speeds up licensing processes and provides investors with clear and predictable timelines. He said the need for regulatory coordination has become even more urgent as emerging technologies—including artificial intelligence, cloud computing and high-density data centres—continue to converge, making traditional sector-by-sector regulation increasingly inadequate. To address the challenge, Inuwa said NITDA is championing a horizontal regulatory framework that establishes broad standards which sector-specific regulators can subsequently adopt and build upon. He cited Nigeria's National Sovereign Cloud Initiative as an example of how regulatory coordination can reduce compliance burdens, noting that the Central Bank of Nigeria leveraged NITDA's horizontal framework to issue a single circular for the financial sector. The approach, he explained, enables financial institutions to comply with digital stability requirements without having to obtain separate approvals from multiple regulatory bodies. Extending the proposal beyond Nigeria, Inuwa advocated common African standards for cross-border data transfers anchored on interoperability, trust and security. He said clearly defined data classifications distinguishing sovereign in-country data from public and hybrid cloud assets would enable African countries to exchange data more seamlessly while recognising one another's compliance standards and reducing repetitive local approval processes. The NITDA boss also rejected concerns that regulatory agencies primarily regard technology companies as revenue-generating targets. He explained that NITDA operates under a Regulatory Intelligence Framework designed to stimulate business growth and investment rather than extract revenue from businesses. 'Regulation,' he stressed, should be viewed as a tool for shaping economic behaviour and creating functioning markets, rather than merely as a rigid rulebook. Inuwa added that NITDA does not charge businesses for its regulations, maintaining that the agency's focus remains on market creation, local capacity development and attracting sustainable, long-term investment into Nigeria's digital economy. The session also featured Caroline Okafor, Legal Enforcement and Regulation, Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC); Tony Izuagbe Emoekpere, President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON); Mercy Ndegwa, Director, Public Policy, East & Horn of Africa/Economic Policy Lead, Africa, Meta; and Eng. Dennis Chepkwony, Director, Universal Service Fund, Communication Authority of Kenya.