CEO Letter - October 2025

One of the most pressing challenges - and opportunities - facing African organisations today is how to navigate the evolving landscape of data sovereignty and regulatory compliance while still unlocking the full potential of cloud computing.

Across the continent, we’ve seen firsthand how regulatory shifts are reshaping cloud strategies. From banks in Nigeria and Ghana, to telcos in Kenya, to public sector entities in South Africa and Egypt - the message is increasingly clear: data must be stored, processed, and protected within local jurisdictions.

But that doesn’t mean innovation should slow down.

The Compliance Mandate Is Local - The Technology Must Be Global

In Nigeria, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have introduced frameworks requiring that certain categories of data be hosted within the country. Kenya and Ghana are pursuing similar localisation efforts - particularly around citizen data and financial records. Egypt has implemented robust controls on cross-border data transfers, and South Africa’s POPIA legislation continues to raise the bar for how personal data is handled and secured.

For organisations operating across borders or in regulated industries, this has created a paradox:

How do you stay compliant with increasingly localised laws, while still accessing global-scale cloud infrastructure?

The answer, increasingly, lies in hybrid and regionally-aligned cloud strategies - with architecture that is both sovereign and scalable.

Building for Compliance, Not Just Performance

At Deimos, we work closely with our clients to design infrastructure that adheres to regulatory mandates without stifling agility. That means:

• Leveraging in-country or regionally hosted cloud regions - such as Huawei Cloud's data centres in South Africa/Nigeria/Egypt etc - to meet data localisation requirements.
• Using Hybrid Cloud to keep sensitive data on-prem or in-country, while integrating public cloud services for elasticity and innovation.
• Applying fine-grained access controls and encryption standards that align with frameworks like POPIA, GDPR, and Kenya’s Data Protection Act.
• Embedding Cloud Security Architecture into every layer of the deployment to ensure compliance and security go hand in hand.

Compliance isn’t a one-time exercise. It’s an evolving discipline. And in Africa, where regulation is moving fast, adaptability is just as critical as conformance.

What We’re Seeing

• A fintech in Nigeria hosting its core banking infrastructure in local data centres, while using public cloud for customer engagement tooling - ensuring CBN alignment without limiting functionality.
• A South African organisation using Google Cloud but geo-restricting storage to the Johannesburg region - balancing compliance with global cloud capability.
• A cross-border payment provider in East Africa building a multi-region architecture to handle transaction processing in-country, while running analytics workloads in a global zone.

Each of these strategies reflects a clear shift: data strategy is now business strategy.

Our Role in Enabling Secure, Compliant Cloud Adoption

At Deimos, we see it as our responsibility to help organisations across Africa build trust through transparency and compliance. That includes:

• Performing tailored Cloud Security Assessments
• Designing cloud-native architectures that align with both local regulations and global best practices
• Offering local currency billing and SLA-backed regional support, ensuring continuity and control

We’re proud to work with organisations that take compliance seriously - not as a barrier, but as a differentiator.

Final Thoughts

Africa’s cloud evolution will not - and should not - follow the same path as the West. Our regulatory realities, sovereign priorities, and infrastructural contexts demand unique approaches. But that doesn’t mean compromise. It means clarity. It means strategy.

If you’re navigating the shifting landscape of data governance and cloud compliance, Deimos is here to help. Let’s build a future where compliance and cloud innovation go hand in hand - because in Africa, they must.

Warm regards,
Andrew Mori
CEO, Deimos