Stakeholders Urged to Develop Data Economy Strategies to Drive $18.3bn Digital Economy

Emma Okonji

The Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has called on industry stakeholders in data infrastructure to develop strong data economy strategies that would help Nigeria attain the projected $18.3 billion digital economy value by 2026, which is also projected to double in five years.

National Commissioner/CEO of NDPC, Dr. Vincent Olatunji, who gave the advice during his keynote address at the ongoing IoT West Africa 2026 Conference in Lagos, said the digital economy remained the fastest growing economic sector, driving the significant share of new value creation globally and that its contribution to the global economy has been projected to reach $28 trillion in 2026, contributing over 22 per cent to global GDP.

According to him, the impact of digital economy is also projected to reach $18.3 billion in 2026, contributing about 20 per cent to Nigeria’s GDP, with a further projection to double in the next five years.  

“Data infrastructure and Cloud IoT, among others, are the technologies that are driving key economic trends globally that we have actually witnessed over time. Look at the dominance of digital business models. Look at the kind of services they are deploying, lines of industry, and ecosystem, digital strategies, and data infrastructure. These are the enablers of digital economy. What the world is driving at now is to develop data economy strategies that will drive all sectors of the economy. For Nigeria to partake in the global digital economy, we must develop data economy strategies, because data is the new world, driven by Internet of Things (IoTs) and data centers,” Olatunji said.

Speaking about the importance of data to economic growth, Olatunji said: “Data infrastructure is a critical infrastructure that we can’t do anything without making investments. Stakeholders must therefore ensure that they invest in data infrastructure in order to develop the Nigerian economy. In the last 15 years, the amount of data generated in Nigeria has grown over 90 times, and that is more than 90 per cent growth in the processing of the data we generate on a regular basis in the last 15 years. Putting that figure to the 181 gigabytes of data generated so far, it is expected that by the end of 2026, there is this potential that Nigeria will generate about 221 gigabytes of data”

According to him, Nigeria is generating so much data because most Nigerians now have mobile phones to connect to the internet, interact, do research, and do video streaming and generate content.

He however said increase in data generation has also led to increase in cybercrimes.

“Now, as we generate data, as we use data, the trends are determined. These are the figures that we have in terms of economic value, and that is most evident in terms of the number of attacks that we experience on a regular basis. In a year, Nigerian organisations get over 4,000 attacks per week, and recently, a lot of organisations have been attacked,” Olatunji said, adding that NDPC is putting measures in place to protect data and data privacy of Nigerians.

During a panel session, which discussed the sub-theme: ‘The Role of Digital Twins for Data Centre Optimisation in Nigeria’, the panelists insisted that Digital Twins could reduce the cost of operating a data centre in terms of the cost of power generation, cooling system, and monitoring of cyberattacks on systems and infrastructure.

CEO, Kasi Cloud, Mr. Johnson Agogbua, one of the panelists, said Digital Twins would help data centre operators to make faster and better decisions, while allowing them to train data centre operators to be able to visualise the challenges before they occur.

CEO of Galaxy Backbone Limited, Prof. Ibrahim Adeyanju, who also featured as a panelist, stressed the importance of Digital Twins in driving digital economy through data centre operation. 

He said Digital Twins would bring about efficiency in power, cooling and monitoring of data centre, which according to him, will further drive data economy strategies for the development of Nigeria’s digital economy.

Digital Transformation Director, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Mr. Kayode Akomolafe, who also featured as a panelist, said: “With Digital Twins, one could optimise the power system better and be able to, of course, reduce the costs associated with power. That’s one thing we expect from a Digital Twins. The second one has to do with cooling, as Digital Twins will allow data centers to predict the failure of cooling equipment, and it will be able to simulate layers of things happening in terms of data protection.”