Every time you tap your phone to pay, transfer money or use a POS, a record of that transaction is created. Where that record is stored is now a matter of national policy. In June, the Central Bank of Nigeria directed banks, fintechs, mobile money operators and other payment service providers to store and manage payment data generated in Nigeria within the country. The deadline is January 1, 2027.
To discuss what the directive means for businesses, consumers and Nigeria’s digital infrastructure, Business Morning spoke with Lynda Saint-Nwafor, Chief Enterprise Business Officer at MTN Nigeria.
Interviewer: Stakeholders have said that six months is too short to meet the January 2027 deadline. Do you agree, and what would be a realistic timeline for migrating and storing this data in Nigeria?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: Thank you very much once again for having me. I think the most important thing we need to focus on is the rationale behind this policy.
Data is the new oil, and anyone who has access to your data has the potential to influence and determine your future. That is why the issue of sovereignty is a topical discussion in many countries, and Nigeria cannot be left behind.
That is not to say that effectively managing the transition or migration of data, or the repatriation of data from wherever it is currently hosted outside Nigeria, is an easy task. Operators that currently host their data outside Nigeria will need to take stock of where that data sits, identify the relevant data that must be migrated, determine the right architecture to enable a successful migration and identify the right partners to help them do so.
So, I think the question is, why is it important that we do this? Is it in the best interest of Nigeria? My answer is yes. I believe this opportunity also creates opportunities for people who want to invest in this market and believe in this market to make the necessary investments. That way, we can join hands and meet the deadline set by the regulator.
Interviewer: Do we have enough local data centres to house the transaction data generated by banks and fintechs, particularly as this migration takes place?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: A lot has been happening in the data centre and digital space in Nigeria over the past couple of years. Markets are created in different ways, and policy intervention is one of those ways.
Anyone who wants to make an investment will have to put their money where they can make the right returns. If you do not have the right volume to justify that investment, the investment will not come.
The position now is that the regulator has made a policy statement that is shaping a new market and creating a new market for Nigeria. There has been a lot of investment in the data centre space, but not just in data centres. A data centre is essentially the physical infrastructure that houses the infrastructure on which data is hosted.
There has also been significant investment in cloud infrastructure and sovereign cloud, ensuring that everything within a cloud platform, from control to storage and computing, is localised in Nigeria.
That investment is already happening in Nigeria. As this new market develops, it will encourage even more investment to be localised in the country, and there are many benefits to that.
The first is foreign direct investment in Nigeria. We are not taking money out of Nigeria and putting it somewhere else. We are also creating more jobs for Nigerians, particularly in the technology space, while building skills and capabilities in data centre operations, cloud operations, cloud engineering and data management.
Ultimately, it is in the best interest of Nigerians. The Nigerian economy will benefit from it.
As more and more data is domiciled in Nigeria, the investment required will continue to increase because you cannot migrate data into infrastructure that does not exist. The infrastructure is there, and there are already companies making investments.
MTN Nigeria, for example, had already made significant investments before this policy. Last year, we launched the Sifiso Dabengwa Data Centre, and we also launched MTN Cloud, a cloud platform that can compete with hyperscale platforms.
Interviewer: Data centres are expensive. When we hear about the amount companies such as Amazon invest in data centres around the world, can Nigeria attract the level of investment required to build this infrastructure? MTN alone cannot cater to all Nigerians, particularly as more data comes into the country. Where do you expect the investment to come from?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: Investments follow value. As soon as value and value opportunities are created, the right investment will follow.
Investors are looking for opportunities to put their money where they can make returns. When we create a market through policy, as the CBN policy and the enabling support it provides are doing, we create an environment for investment.
Investors will follow companies and organisations that not only believe in Nigeria, but have the capability and willingness to turn that belief into action.
We are looking for companies like MTN Nigeria that believe in Nigeria and have the capability and willingness to put their money where their mouth is by making the investments required. That is already happening.
There are many organisations coming in and looking for partnerships to work with us and scale because the infrastructure is there. We just need to scale it as demand scales.
Interviewer: This might sound like a lot of technical language to some people. Explain it to us like we are traders in Balogun Market. Why should I care where my payment data sits? I make a transfer and, as we say in our local parlance, “e don go.” Why should I care where my data is stored?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: It is extremely important. Like I said, data is the new oil. Data about you and the information around you are used to make decisions that can affect your future.
If I have information about where you spend, what you do with your money, when you spend and where you spend it, and we have an aggregation of those opportunities, that information can be used to determine where investments should go.
If that information is sitting outside the country, someone else can use it to determine where they will put their investment and potentially come and compete locally with us.
Whoever has your data has the opportunity and potential to define your future. We cannot simply allow that to happen. It is an opportunity for us to take our future into our own hands and start building.
We understand our market. We need to enable our people to build solutions that will serve our people, for Nigeria by Nigerians.
Interviewer: What type of payment data is covered by the directive? Which institutions are affected, and do global players such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal also have to comply with the new rule?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: The policy statement is clear to a reasonable level. It says that every payment transaction data generated in Nigeria must be stored and managed locally in Nigeria.
So, as long as that payment transaction data is generated in Nigeria, it must be stored and managed in Nigeria. Whoever you are, as long as you are operating within the payment ecosystem and that transaction is generated in Nigeria, the data must be stored and managed locally.
Interviewer: What happens if a Nigerian uses their card to make a payment abroad? Where does that data sit?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: If that card is managed by a Nigerian company, the company is aware that you are making that transaction.
For example, I use a credit card and make a transaction in Paris, and I receive a call almost immediately that the transaction is happening. The company has oversight of that transaction data.
It is localised to me because I originated the transaction as a resident of Nigeria who owns a local account in Nigeria. That data must therefore be stored and managed in Nigeria.
Interviewer: We have talked about how expensive data infrastructure can be. When these data centres are developed, who bears the cost? Will MTN and other financial institutions pass the cost on to customers?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: The reality is that those costs already exist today. Financial services companies that host their data externally are already paying for it. There is no service that is free. So, that cost is essentially moving from providers outside Nigeria to providers within Nigeria. The cost already exists.
There are different options available to these organisations. Some may decide to make an upfront investment in physical infrastructure and put it in a data centre, then run the operations themselves. Others can partner with cloud providers such as MTN Nigeria and bring their data back into Nigeria to sit on existing infrastructure. They do not necessarily have to make that investment themselves.
The good thing about cloud is that you pay as you use it. If you do not scale, you do not pay for additional capacity. If you make your money in naira, you can pay in naira. The reality of hosting your data outside Nigeria is that while you make your income in naira, you often pay for the service in dollars.
Interviewer: What about smaller fintechs? Can they survive this transition and compete with bigger players that own data centres, or will they have to coexist with larger infrastructure providers?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: Honestly, I do not believe that microfinance banks and small fintechs typically own their own data centres or infrastructure.
Fintechs generally operate an asset-light model. That means they do not necessarily make capital investments in servers, infrastructure or data centres. They host their applications on the cloud.
What is happening now is that there are established and capable cloud providers, such as MTN Nigeria, that have already put the infrastructure in place and made those investments ahead of time.
All that is required is for these companies to work with us so that we can migrate their data from where they are currently incurring expenses in dollars to infrastructure where those expenses can be made in naira. That saves costs, eases the pressure of foreign exchange and improves latency.
Interviewer: How will this affect everyday transactions? If I am making a payment, what should I expect?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: It should be seamless for anyone making a transaction. That is the goal.
That is not to say the new regulation or policy will not introduce work. A lot of work will be required because careful planning is needed to design and architect a solution that will migrate data from where it is currently hosted outside Nigeria to another platform in Nigeria.
A lot of technical diligence is required to do that, but it has to be done seamlessly. That is the objective.
The reason we are asking organisations to work with us is that we sit with them, understand their architecture and carry out the migration in a way that is seamless to the person conducting a daily transaction.
It will not be successful if it is not seamless for the end customer.
Interviewer: Is the January 1 deadline realistic for migrating all this data into Nigeria, or should the CBN governor phase the migration process?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: I am part of the ecosystem, but I am on the supply side. From a supply perspective, we are ready. We have built the infrastructure and developed Nigerians with the skills and capabilities to help organisations migrate their data.
However, I do not sit where the regulator sits. I also know that many Nigerian banks, particularly the first-generation banks, already have most of their data and workloads localised.
The fintechs, because they operate an asset-light model, may have more of their data externalised.
What I believe is that we need to get started. We need to sit around the table and understand where this data sits, who has the capacity, competence and scalability to help migrate it seamlessly, and what each organisation needs to do.
We also need to show good faith and demonstrate to the regulator that we are doing the work. I do not think the regulator is unaware of the challenges of the operating environment, but they need to see movement.
They need to see that we support the policy, understand its rationale and are taking steps to implement it.
Interviewer: So, what would be a more realistic timeline for getting this done seamlessly?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: As I said, I believe we have already started.
There are financial services organisations that we are already working with on our cloud platform. We have more than 100 customers on the platform today, and we are working with them and migrating data. We have also completed two successful data migrations on MTN Cloud.
From a supply perspective, we are ready. We are simply saying that we need to come together, understand the realities and bring some realism into the process.
We need to go through the details of each organisation’s data assets, determine where they are and take an inventory of what it will require to migrate them.
Until we do that, I cannot tell you that it is not possible.
Interviewer: Are companies being cautious because of concerns around data security? Have you encountered any hesitation about moving their data to local infrastructure?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: Absolutely. If you understand what it takes to manage large data sets, you will understand the hesitation and caution we are seeing.
Data management is not just about physical infrastructure. It is about scalability and security.
Security is not determined by where data is hosted. It is determined by encryption, access control and auditing. Your cloud engineering principles are what determine that security.
Localising data gives the regulator control. It is understandable that organisations want to be sure that the country has the capacity to manage their data securely.
Of course, we have companies that have done this. MTN Nigeria, I believe, is arguably one of the largest data management companies in Nigeria, and we have been doing this for 25 years.
We have tens of thousands of servers across more than 12 data centres in Nigeria, spread across the country, with Nigerians managing tens of petabytes of data on a daily basis.
We have built that capacity within MTN Nigeria and have now made those capabilities available to businesses in Nigeria through MTN Cloud.
There are organisations that have the capacity and have already tested and proven it. We are asking them to sit with us and understand how we can assist them in meeting this obligation.
Interviewer: As discussions and negotiations continue with fintechs and other companies, should consumers be concerned about possible slowdowns or downtime as we approach December and January?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: Organisations that run large operations generally avoid carrying out certain activities during peak periods because every business has a peak period.
For the payment ecosystem, that could be salary periods and festive seasons. In the telecommunications space, we also have peak periods, particularly in the evenings.
We therefore try, as much as possible, to manage operations responsibly and avoid carrying out traffic-impacting activities during peak periods.
That is why we have this window to start the conversation and do the necessary work well ahead of the Christmas period, so that we have no reason to explain to consumers why they are experiencing downtime.
Interviewer: Many Nigerians use fintechs because they want to avoid downtime and failed transactions, particularly when a debit occurs but the corresponding credit does not come through. Could localising data help reduce failed transactions?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: The strength and capability of the application is one thing. The infrastructure on which it is hosted is a different matter.
However, some applications require very low latency. You need to initiate an action and have it happen very quickly.
When you localise data, latency is reduced because the data is no longer travelling across continents. As a result, response times can become much faster, which can improve the experience for those types of transactions.
Interviewer: What advice would you give to a CEO watching this and thinking, “Should I migrate? Should I join MTN? Should I host my data with MTN?”
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: First of all, compliance is absolutely a must. It is a board-level requirement.
We operate in a highly regulated environment, so when a regulator issues a policy, it is our responsibility to comply. That is the first thing. We all have to comply.
The second thing I want to say is that I understand the fears. But I also want to reiterate that MTN is a company that believes in Nigeria. MTN believes that everyone deserves the benefit of a modern, connected world, and we are not shy about putting our money where our mouth is.
We have demonstrated that through many of the things we have done. We are leading the delivery of a bold new digital world, and we also want to lead the delivery of a bold sovereign cloud for Nigeria.
We have done this before. We have the experience and the expertise. We generate a significant amount of data in Nigeria, and we run that data on servers hosted in Nigeria across different parts of the country.
We understand the nuances of operating in this environment. We understand how to architect solutions, and we have brought that experience into MTN Cloud.
We are simply saying that if organisations trust and believe in any of the hyperscalers in the world, they can trust and believe in MTN Cloud because MTN Cloud is built for us, by us, for what is next.
Interviewer: Looking beyond 2027, is this the beginning of Nigeria becoming a regional digital hub for West Africa and potentially the wider continent?
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: You took the words out of my mouth. This is our opportunity, and I want all the players in the ecosystem, from both the supply and demand sides, to look at it from the perspective of what is in the best interest of this country.
When we keep data in Nigeria, we attract investment. We pull investment into Nigeria rather than exporting investment out of Nigeria.
When we bring investment into Nigeria, we create jobs. We equip our people with relevant skills for the digital age, and those skills are required to build the digital economy that the government has been advocating for.
We have an opportunity to build the digital backbone for Nigeria and the rest of Africa. We have the talent and the people. We now have a policy that can attract investment, and we have organisations with the capability and willingness to make the necessary investments in Nigeria.
We are asking everyone to come along with us and make this investment so that we can build a strong sovereign cloud that all of us can be proud of.
Interviewer: Definitely. Something Nigerian-owned and Nigerian-made is something we should be proud of and look forward to. Thank you so much, Ms Lynda Saint-Nwafor, Chief Enterprise Business Officer at MTN Nigeria, for joining us on Business Morning and sharing your insights.
Lynda Saint-Nwafor: Thank you so much for having me.