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Piql West Africa is strengthening its board, advisory and operational structures as it moves from a single landmark data-preservation project in Nigeria towards a multi-country expansion covering Ghana, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
The company, which trades as Piql West Africa under Piql Africa Ltd, is positioning governance as a critical component of its expansion strategy, arguing that the long-term preservation of institutional records requires stronger structures beyond the deployment of storage technology.
Piql’s market assessment estimates that about 90 per cent of public-sector data in Nigeria lacks long-term protection. The company says poor digitisation practices, the cost and vulnerability of conventional cloud storage, and recurring loss of institutional records have created a need for offline and tamper-proof preservation systems.
At the centre of its governance structure is Nze Ed Keazor, a historian, lawyer and archivist who chairs the board. His background combines legal and archival expertise, areas that are central to the company’s proposition of preserving records with long-term institutional, historical and evidentiary value.
Keazor has increasingly framed the company’s work as an issue extending beyond data storage to the preservation of institutional memory and Africa’s historical record.
“The AWA Legacy Summit is not just about storing data, it is about defining how Africa will be remembered,” he said.
The company has also established an advisory board designed to broaden its technical, academic and digital transformation expertise.
Nze Meekam Mgbenwelu, based in London, chairs the advisory board, with a focus on digital transformation and artificial intelligence. Professor Emeka Emmanuel Oguzie, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, and Professor Chima Jacob Korieh provide academic and historical expertise, while Aarti Tailor completes the advisory structure.
The operational structure is headed in Nigeria by Country Head Chinomso Onwukwe-Ibe, with Chinasa Ihenacho responsible for operations and Paul Alfred serving as Regional Lead Consultant and Country Lead.
The team is overseeing engagements involving government ministries, state archives, broadcast institutions, universities and traditional and community authorities.
In Ghana, James Aggrey-Orleans serves as Country Director and is leading the company’s role as preservation technology partner in the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD) bid under the World Bank-financed Ghana Digital Acceleration Project.
The Ghana engagement represents an important test of whether the preservation model being developed in Nigeria can be transferred successfully into other West African markets.
Piql West Africa’s governance expansion is tied to a three-phase strategy running to 2028.
The first phase, described as Anchor and Pilot, focuses on building relationships with institutions including the Central Bank of Nigeria, the National Archives of Nigeria and the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.
The second phase, Scale and Localise, is expected to focus on establishing a domestic production facility and expanding training through the Piql Academy.
The final phase, Institutionalise and Expand, targets wider adoption across the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), alongside a deeper relationship with UNESCO.
The company has attached specific commercial targets to the strategy. It plans to grow from 10 clients and about N600 million in revenue in the first year to 30 clients, N2.65 billion in revenue and three ECOWAS clients by the third year. It is also targeting 150 cumulative certifications.
The targets, however, will depend heavily on the company’s ability to convert institutional relationships into sustainable contracts while demonstrating that its preservation technology can operate effectively across different regulatory and administrative environments.
For Piql West Africa, the emerging governance structure therefore represents more than corporate expansion. It reflects an attempt to build an institution capable of operating across jurisdictions and preserving the records of institutions whose own mandates may extend across generations.
As the company moves into Ghana and prepares for wider West African expansion, its board, advisers and country-level leadership will face the task of matching the ambition of permanent data preservation with the equally demanding requirements of institutional credibility, execution and accountability.
