MTN Launches Cloud Platform to Stop Nigeria’s $850M Annual Cloud Outflow

On Tuesday, July 1, during the launch of the much-anticipated Dabengwa Sifiso Data Centre in Ikeja, the capital of Lagos, MTN Nigeria also unveiled its cloud services to help boost and strengthen Nigeria’s growing tech ecosystem.

The event—attended by Dr. Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy; Karl Toriola, CEO of MTN Nigeria; Lynda Saint-Nwafor, Chief Enterprise Business Officer at MTN Nigeria; and Barr. Bimbola Salu-Hundeyin, Secretary to the Lagos State Government (representing Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu), among other dignitaries from both the public and private sectors—also marked the official launch of MTN Cloud.

Speaking at the unveiling, Lynda Saint-Nwafor said MTN Cloud creates new opportunities for tech startups and enterprises. She also announced plans to launch an accelerator programme to support startup growth.

“We just unveiled our cloud offering that brings Nigeria into a new era of digital infrastructure—reliable, secure, and local. But we are not stopping there. A few weeks from now, we’ll launch the MTN Cloud Accelerator—from Africa, for Africa—under our impact programme designed to fuel the growth of Africa’s most promising startups. This isn’t just another accelerator; it is the launchpad for business,” she said.

Earlier, during a press briefing with journalists on Monday, June 30, ahead of the launch, MTN Nigeria stated that its new cloud platform, MTN Cloud, will help curb the annual outflow of up to $850 million to foreign cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. The service aims to offer Nigerian businesses and developers a truly local alternative—self-orchestrated, priced in naira, and backed by MTN’s Tier III data centre in Lagos.

“In terms of the journey it takes to onboard your data on the global and hyperscaler cloud… I believe we are the first to offer a self-orchestration data platform in Nigeria,” Saint-Nwafor said during the briefing.

“When you go to Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure, as a developer, you can log in and orchestrate your compute and storage environment yourself. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, that hasn’t been possible—until now.”

She explained that MTN Cloud will now allow developers, startups, enterprises, and government institutions to manage their cloud resources end-to-end via cloud.mtn.com.

“What we’ve built is a platform that allows you, from anywhere in the world, to log in and orchestrate everything yourself,” she added. “It is something that has not been available in Nigeria until now. We’re enabling the ecosystem to do what hasn’t been done before.”

For Nigeria’s public and private sectors—especially financial institutions—this has significant implications. Referring to the widespread service disruptions caused by the 2023 undersea cable damage, she noted:

“Many financial institutions couldn’t function because they host their data and applications outside Nigeria. When that sort of thing happens, MTN Cloud ensures business continuity—because there’s no external dependency. What we’ve built is local, and protected.”

Also at the briefing, Karl Toriola emphasized that MTN Cloud provides an opportunity for data sovereignty in Nigeria and reduces exposure to external risks by ensuring Nigerian enterprises’ data stays within national borders.

“We’ve seen all the conflicts in the Middle East recently—intelligence forces doing whatever it is they do. But I think every country wants to protect what is theirs, and data is a critical asset,” he said.

“Hosting Nigerian businesses’ data in Nigeria and protecting them from exposure to sovereign data risks in foreign states—possibly even aggressive, adversarial states—by hosting this data locally is a major advantage we’ve now put in place.”

MTN Cloud runs on a pay-as-you-use model, is priced in naira, and is built with robust security and compliance tools, including role-based access control and automated APIs for faster product deployment and operational agility.

It also integrates APIs that allow users to fully automate their cloud experience.

Saint-Nwafor was direct about the economic impact: “Today, the three big hyperscalers—Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—take between $600 million and $850 million out of Nigeria annually. We don’t need to go there anymore. MTN Cloud offers exactly what they offer—and more.”

With the launch of both the Data Centre and Cloud services, MTN says it is positioning itself not just as a telecoms giant but as a key enabler of Africa’s digital independence—especially at a time when data sovereignty, speed, and resilience matter more than ever.