Abuja, Nigeria — Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB), Nigeria’s foremost ICT infrastructure and shared services provider, has announced a strategic partnership with the Office for Nigerian Digital Innovation (ONDI), a division of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), to provide subsidised sovereign cloud services to startups participating in the iHatch programme.
This collaboration comes at a pivotal moment in Nigeria’s digital evolution, as the nation intensifies its focus on data sovereignty, digital inclusion, and indigenous innovation. Through this partnership, participating startups will be onboarded to the Galaxy Cloud Platform (GxCP), GBB’s sovereign cloud infrastructure powered by Uptime-certified Tier III and Tier IV data centres, a robust nationwide fibre network, and advanced cybersecurity capabilities.
Speaking on the initiative, the Director General of NITDA, Kashif Inuwa Abdullahi, highlighted that the partnership reinforces the Agency’s commitment to nurturing a resilient and globally competitive startup ecosystem by providing access to critical digital infrastructure. In the same vein, the MD/CEO of GBB, Professor Ibrahim Adeyanju, emphasised that the programme is designed to empower startups with access to secure, enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure at highly subsidised rates, enabling them to build, innovate, and scale while hosting their data locally within Nigeria, ultimately strengthening the country’s digital sovereignty and economic resilience.
To ensure long-term impact and sustainability, GBB will implement a tiered, milestone-based support model in which cloud credits are released in phases aligned with each startup’s growth journey—Build, Validate, and Scale. These credits are to be utilised within a 12-month period, after which startups will transition to standard subscription or pay-as-you-go billing models.
Further strengthening the initiative, GBB will deploy a dedicated Startup Success Team to guide onboarding and drive adoption. Startups will also benefit from automated usage monitoring and alerts to ensure optimal resource utilisation. Notably, all post-credit billing will be conducted in Nigerian Naira, shielding startups from foreign exchange volatility and enhancing financial predictability.
Commenting on the broader impact of the initiative, Abdul Malik Suleiman, General Manager, Strategic Partnerships at GBB, noted that the collaboration represents a deliberate effort to bridge the gap between infrastructure and innovation by making world-class cloud services more accessible to Nigerian startups. Similarly, the National Coordinator of ONDI, Victoria Fabunmi, underscored that integrating GBB’s sovereign cloud infrastructure into the iHatch programme significantly enhances the capacity of startups to move from ideation to scale, while ensuring they are equipped with the right digital tools to compete both locally and globally.
The iHatch programme, an initiative supported by NITDA through ONDI, has already trained over 160 startups across 37 hub partners nationwide. This partnership with GBB is set to deepen that impact—accelerating innovation, enabling scale, and strengthening Nigeria’s digital ecosystem.