Nigeria’s data protection regulator has joined forces with payments giant Mastercard (NASDAQ: MA) to boost data privacy in the country’s financial industry.
Under the collaboration, the Nigerian Data Protection Commission (NDPC) will onboard Mastercard’s employees nationwide onto its Virtual Privacy Academy, an education platform for data privacy courses. The courses cover personal data protection, compliance standards for data processing and storage, cybersecurity practices for data handlers, and regulatory obligations for any firm that holds Nigerians’ data.
“Privacy is not just a compliance requirement; it’s a core pillar of digital trust. By enrolling all our Nigerian staff in the NDPC Virtual Privacy Academy, we are embedding privacy awareness into the fabric of our operations and supporting Nigeria’s digital rights agenda,” commented Mastercard’s Africa President Mark Elliot.
It’s not the first time the two have collaborated on a data privacy initiative. Earlier this year, NDPC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mastercard to enhance data protection in the country. The agreement culminated in a workshop in Abuja where 150 industry professionals received training on the Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA), which promotes a risk-based approach for any company processing personal data.
Speaking at the time, NDPC’s National Commissioner, Vincent Olatunji, said the agency aimed to train 250,000 data protection officers annually, with partners like Mastercard being vital to the initiative.
Olatunji now says that the new initiative with the American firm will “deliver real-world solutions that strengthen Nigeria’s data protection ecosystem.”
“The Virtual Privacy Academy will play a critical role in empowering professionals with the knowledge and confidence to uphold ethical data practices in a rapidly evolving digital world,” he added.
The partnership extends beyond internal compliance at Mastercard; the two plan to train the payment firm’s partners and vendors across Nigeria to boost data protection compliance in the entire payments space.
Digital payments in Nigeria have surged in recent years, driven by a rise in internet penetration and a thriving fintech sector. Cash crunches and government initiatives—like one that limits weekly cash withdrawals by individuals to $335—have also played a part, drawing even more Nigerians to digital platforms.
According to a report by Mastercard earlier this year, 99% of Nigerian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) accept digital payments. Last year, the West African country recorded ₦1.07 quadrillion ($702 billion) in digital payments, an 80% surge year-over-year.
This growth in digital payments has necessitated stronger oversight by the NDPC, resulting in a 15% increase in data protection ecosystem revenue to hit ₦13.8 billion ($9.27 million) last year. NDPC also collected fines worth ₦400 million ($268,800) from companies that violated its policies in 2024 and has pledged to impose even heavier penalties this year.
Uganda to build Africa’s largest AI data center
Meanwhile, a Ugandan company has unveiled plans to build Africa’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) data center as the region targets data sovereignty in the AI era.
Ugandan digital infrastructure company Synectics Technologies says the new center will cost over $1.2 billion and run on 100 megawatts of renewable energy. Its modular design will allow the company to expand it in the future as the market grows and the technology evolves.
The project will be developed on an 80-acre digital city in northern Uganda along the River Nile.
“By digitalizing clean energy through best-in-class infrastructure, we are empowering Africa to control its data backbone responsibly, sustainably, and sovereignly,” commented CEO Oladele Oyekunle.
Despite being home to nearly a fifth of the global population, Africa only hosts 1% of the global data center capacity. This has severely limited the growth of its digital economy and emerging technologies such as AI, which heavily rely on user data. It has also left the continent reliant on Western tech giants such as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), which control this data.
Efforts are being made to change this. In April, Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa announced that he would build the region’s first AI factory in South Africa, partnering with Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) to deploy its GPUs to train local AI models.
Other firms like India’s Airtel and American payments giant Visa (NASDAQ: V) have also unveiled similar initiatives amid projections of a $3 billion data center market in Africa by the decade’s end.
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Watch: Boosting financial inclusion in Africa with BSV blockchain
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Source: https://coingeek.com/nigeria-mastercard-boost-data-privacy-uganda-plans-ai-hub/
