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By Chinenye Anuforo
Unicloud Africa, a pan-African cloud platform committed to advancing the continent’s digital sovereignty, has officially launched its enterprise-grade Sovereign Cloud and AI infrastructure in six countries: Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Zambia, Senegal, and Mozambique. The platform is designed to give African enterprises and governments unprecedented control, performance, and financial certainty, positioning the continent for a new era of digital independence.
Operating under the mission “One Cloud, One Africa,” Unicloud Africa has partnered with TouchNet, a leading African technology services provider, to ensure the platform is built on a robust, scalable foundation tailored to the continent’s unique needs. This collaboration provides African businesses and governments with a fully compliant, high-performance alternative to costly, high-latency offshore cloud providers.
At a media briefing in Lagos, Ladi Okuneye, CEO of Unicloud Africa, described the platform as the foundation for Africa’s true digital and financial independence. He emphasized that the launch addresses long-standing challenges faced by African enterprises, including financial unpredictability, regulatory compliance, and the need for scalable, locally hosted infrastructure.
Unicloud Africa allows businesses to pay for world-class cloud services in their local currency, eliminating foreign exchange volatility and unexpected costs. The platform also charges no data egress fees, offering predictability for enterprises retrieving their data. Delivered on a flexible pay-per-use model, it removes the need for large upfront capital expenditure, enabling organizations to free up resources for growth.
The platform guarantees that all sensitive data, particularly for AI, machine learning, and big data workloads, is hosted and processed entirely within each country of operation, supporting regulatory compliance in critical sectors such as finance, healthcare, and government. Its architecture features two active-active availability zones and offers a contractual 99.999% uptime SLA, providing the resilience required for mission-critical enterprise operations. Unicloud Africa also meets global certification standards, including ISO 27001 for information security and ISO 22301 for business continuity.
For organizations looking to harness artificial intelligence, the platform provides GPU-as-a-Service, delivering high-performance computing on demand to support complex AI models and large-scale applications. Its developer-friendly environment aligns with global cloud standards, ensuring rapid adoption by local and international teams.
“For too long, African enterprises have faced high costs and compliance risks with offshore cloud platforms,” said Okuneye. “This launch represents a strategic shift. Unicloud Africa offers world-class infrastructure with local currency billing, zero egress fees, and ISO-certified, in-country data management, creating a foundation for Africa’s digital and financial independence.”
Charly Bahous, CEO of TouchNet, said the partnership accelerates Africa’s digital transformation, providing secure and locally optimized cloud infrastructure that empowers businesses and governments to modernize operations, innovate, and maintain full control of their data. Dr. Ayotunde Coker, CEO of OADC, added that fully localized cloud infrastructure is essential for economic growth and Africa’s digital future, emphasizing his organization’s commitment to supporting initiatives like Unicloud Africa in building a unified digital ecosystem.
Unicloud Africa aims to deliver secure, high-performance, and compliant cloud services across the continent through strategic partnerships, accelerating digital transformation while promoting data sovereignty under the principle: “One Cloud, One Africa.”
