Nigeria's Minister of Communication Adebayo Shittu has said that once Nigeria's data centres have sufficient capacity locally to handle data generated within the country, the government will put a stop to its data being hosted abroad.

During a recent visit to Lagos-based Tier III data centre, Rack Centre, the minister said he was passionate about local data and said "as soon as we have capacity, all our data will be hosted within, I just want to be sure we have capacity."

Ayotunde Coker, Managing Director of Rack Centre said the data centre colocation provider had just doubled its capacity from 119 racks to 255 racks within seven months as part of its effort to meet local demand. "We intend to build that capacity, we have the blueprint and we have proved that it can be done by our doubling the capacity of the centre within just seven months ahead of time and within budget, and that the capacity can be increased again to 600 racks within another seven months once it is identified that the market exists for the expansion."

Minister Shittu said if the local capacity could be met within a year from now, the government would compel ministries, departments and agencies to host locally.

Maher Jarmakani, the Group Co-CEO of Jagal, Rack Centre's parent company, said Jagal Group is committed to continual increase of the capacity of the Rack Centre as it views data as being strategic to the development of not only Nigeria but the African continent. 'We intend to expand the market initially to the West Africa region and then to the rest of the African continent," he said.

The minister added that there would be no challenge in implementing the local content policy as the policy already specifies that for data centre facilities available in the country, government agencies were duty bound to support them.

"It is not logical for the Nigerian government or the private sector to keep patronising the foreign facilities once we have capacity, we will resort to buying outside the shores only if the capacity is not there."