Positioning itself as a local challenger to the US and Chinese hyperscale cloud giants that dominate the continent’s infrastructure, South African-headquartered Unicloud Africa has launched a sovereign cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) network for Africa.
The services are being offered in across six African countries, namely Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Zambia, Senegal, and Mozambique.
The announcement comes as African governments tighten rules on data residency, national security protections, and local ownership of digital systems.
Across the continent, governments, banks, telcos and other enterprises are handling growing volumes of sensitive information, from citizen identities to cross-border payment data, but much of Africa’s cloud workloads are still hosted offshore.
Unicloud CEO Ladi Okuneye said African institutions can no longer afford the financial and governance risks attached to storing core data in foreign jurisdictions.
Speaking at the Lagos press briefing, he said: “This is about digital autonomy. Data is now a strategic asset. Africa must control its digital infrastructure, not just consume it.”
Under its ‘One Cloud, One Africa’ strategy, Unicloud says its platform guarantees that workloads, including AI and machine-learning applications, remain fully in-country.
Another factor the company hopes will be a differentiator is that it’s offering local-currency billing and zero data-egress fees, a move aimed at countering rising cloud costs triggered by foreign-exchange volatility and the dollar-dependent nature of the global cloud market.
Unicloud claims its infrastructure experiences 99.999% uptime, has dual active-active availability zones, and compliance with ISO 27001 and ISO 22301 certifications.
Through a partnership with SA-based TouchNet, Unicloud has already begun deploying GPU-as-a-Service clusters to support African AI developers who currently struggle with limited AI computing capacity on the continent.
Unicloud is hoping to catch the wave of a growing policy shift around data sovereignty across the continent.
South Africa is reviewing cloud governance rules after several high-profile cybersecurity incidents, while both Kenya and Ghana have enacted stronger data-protection enforcement. Nigeria has begun moving toward a unified government cloud infrastructure, signaling a preference for domestically controlled services. Meanwhile, Francophone West African countries are accelerating plans for regional data-sovereignty standards aligned with the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy (2020–2030).
“Governments are simply uncomfortable with the idea that critical national data lives in servers they do not control,” said Ayotunde Coker, CEO, Open Access Data Centres. “The geopolitical risks are clearer now digital infrastructure is national security infrastructure.”
Still, Unicloud faces major hurdles. Africa hosts less than two percent of global datacentre capacity, while demand for cloud and AI compute continually grows at pace. The continent remains heavily dependent on international hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Huawei Cloud, which are accelerating local partnerships and edge-datacentre deployments to protect market share.
“This initiative is going to attract (the interest of) global hyperscalers – competing on price and scale against hyperscalers will be a long game,” Coker added. “But sovereignty is a differentiator users increasingly care about.”
Okuneye acknowledges the challenge but argues timing favors African players. “Local innovation cannot thrive on imported infrastructure alone,” he said. “Africa’s future depends on who owns the rails of the digital economy.”
Unicloud’s rollout continues over the coming months as the company seeks anchor partnerships with governments, financial institutions, and national AI initiatives across the continent.
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