Cut the red tape: NITDA's Inuwa makes case for co-regulation across Africa

Digital infrastructure investors across Africa could soon see an end to red tape, overlapping mandates, and regulatory delays, as the Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, pushes for a more unified regulatory approach.

Inuwa made the case during a Regulatory Roundtable session titled "Regulations that Build: Aligning Policy and Digital Infrastructure Investment Priorities," held at ITW Data Cloud Africa 2026. He used the platform to address the friction that both foreign and domestic investors face when they have to navigate multiple government agencies to get things done.

According to Inuwa, investors want government to function as one cohesive unit rather than a patchwork of disconnected institutions. He argued that aligning agencies internally around a single regulatory interface would cut out duplication, speed up licensing approvals, and give businesses clearer, more predictable timelines when entering the market.

He also pointed to a shift in regulatory philosophy driven by the convergence of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and high-density data centers, which he said has made traditional, sector-by-sector regulation insufficient. In response, NITDA is adopting a horizontal regulatory framework: broad, foundational standards that individual sector regulators can then build on. As an example, Inuwa cited Nigeria's National Sovereign Cloud Initiative, noting that the Central Bank of Nigeria used NITDA's horizontal framework to issue a single circular covering the financial sector, allowing banks to meet digital stability requirements without chasing separate approvals from multiple agencies.

Looking beyond Nigeria's borders, Inuwa called for unified standards for cross-border data transfers and regional markets, built around interoperability, trust, and security. He suggested that if African countries adopt standardised data classifications, clearly distinguishing sovereign in-country data from public or hybrid cloud assets, they could enable smoother data exchange across the continent and recognise one another's compliance standards without duplicating local procedures.

On the perception that regulators see tech firms mainly as sources of revenue, Inuwa pushed back, stating that NITDA operates on a Regulatory Intelligence Framework built to support business growth rather than extract money from operators. He described regulation as a tool for shaping economic behaviour rather than a rigid set of rules, adding that NITDA does not charge for its regulations and is instead focused on building markets, developing local capacity, and drawing in long-term investment.

Joining Inuwa on the panel were Caroline Okafor, Legal Enforcement and Regulation lead at the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC); Tony Izuagbe Emoekpere, President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON); Mercy Ndegwa, Director of Public Policy for East & Horn of Africa and Economic Policy Lead for Africa at Meta; and Eng. Dennis Chepkwony, Director of the Universal Service Fund at Kenya's Communication Authority.