Huawei’s new ‘cloud site’ will address data sovereignty concerns, as well as improving local availability and reducing latency.

Huawei Technologies has announced plans to establish a datacentre in Nigeria, in a move to meet the country’s data storage regulations.

This announcement was made this week during a keynote session delivered by David Olaiya, head, Cloud Fintech Business Development, Huawei Nigeria, at the ongoing Fintech Week event held in Lagos, Nigeria.

According to Huawei Cloud, it has 93 availability zones across 33 regions around the world, but, to date, in Africa it only has datacentre regions in South Africa and Egypt.

Olaiya noted that the new facility, which he referred to as a ‘cloud site’, is set to go live on October 31, and will provide data storage and computing resources for local businesses and sectors.

He stated that the landing of local datacentre hardware will address data sovereignty and compliance concerns, as well as improving local availability and reduce latency.

“This initiative comes in response to the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR), which mandates that Nigerian user data must be stored within the country. Currently, many companies utilising foreign cloud services face challenges in compliance, as data has to be sent across borders.

“Huawei’s data centre will allow businesses to keep their data resident in Nigeria; a significant advantage for fintech companies that require stringent adherence to data protection laws.”

However, this is not the first hyperscale cloud datacentre in the country, as both AWS and Microsoft Azure already have edge datacentres operating in Nigeria.

Olaiya noted that Huawei’s datacentre will serve as an extension of its existing cloud infrastructure in Johannesburg, South Africa, and linked to its datacentre in Dublin, Ireland.

The local data centre will offer the added benefit of a dedicated local support team, which will be complemented by Huawei's global 24/7 support.

In April, Huawei Cloud committed to empowering 100 Nigerian startups on its platforms over the next two years. The cloud vendor has offered up to $150,000 in credits voucher for cloud infrastructure and professional services.