When Nigeria’s National Digital Addressing System (NDAPS) launched on October 1, it promised to change casual, landmark-based navigation with exact 11-character alphanumeric codes. The system is designed to enhance e-commerce deliveries, allow tackle verification for banking and id companies, and assign distinctive digital postcodes to addressable buildings nationwide.
Led by the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) underneath the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, the initiative is meant to present a dependable digital addressing infrastructure for the nation.
TechCabal reported that technical checks of postcode.gov.ng’s public area identify system (DNS) data pointed to Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure within the United States. The discovering raised questions on whether or not a vital public digital asset was hosted overseas, simply as Nigeria strengthens its push for information sovereignty.
“The system has distinct layers,” NIPOST spokesperson Ibrahim Musa informed TechCabal in an e mail response. “Nigeria’s digital postcode infrastructure runs on both AWS and Galaxy Backbone—Nigeria’s official digital infrastructure and shared services provider—but they serve distinct functions.”
What AWS’s cloud companies imply
AWS has infrastructure throughout 247 nations. It opened its first Nigerian office in Lagos in 2022 and has invested in an AWS Local Zone in Lagos to assist prospects and companions adopting its companies domestically.
The firm informed TechCabal that it doesn’t disclose buyer relationships with out their permission.
“AWS is sovereign-by-design,” AWS Communications Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa, Sonwabise Mzinyathi, stated in an e mail response. “We have infrastructure globally so organisations can run AWS services in their own facilities or in a location they specify, keeping data exactly where they need.”
AWS additionally factors to its Nitro System, which makes use of specialised {hardware} and firmware to shield buyer workloads working on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). It is designed to forestall exterior entry to these workloads, together with by AWS staff.
The world cloud companies supplier said that prospects may also encrypt their information and handle their very own encryption keys. “Customers who need to store and use encryption keys outside the AWS Cloud can use an AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) external key store,” stated Mzinyathi, “retaining exclusive control over cryptographic material.”
AWS argued that its infrastructure is designed to stay obtainable throughout provide chain disruptions, community interruptions and pure disasters. “We’ve instilled cloud resilience into our infrastructure, service design and deployment, operational model, and mechanisms to build more resilient cloud architectures,” the corporate stated.
These capabilities, the corporate stated, assist its Digital Sovereignty Pledge, which guarantees prospects higher management over the place their information resides, how it’s accessed, and the way workloads are managed. However, these controls don’t routinely decide the place buyer information lives. That resolution finally will depend on how the client builds and manages its system.
The web site isn’t the database
NIPOST emphasised that the public-facing postcode.gov.ng makes use of AWS’s world content material supply and web-protection companies. These assist pages load sooner and shield the web site towards distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults, which overwhelm on-line platforms with visitors till they turn out to be unavailable.
“The public web site, postcode.gov.ng, makes use of AWS’s world content material supply and web-protection companies, a typical strategy utilized by many authorities and monetary platforms to hold public portals quick and guarded,” NIPOST informed TechCabal.
The company stated Galaxy Backbone hosts and manages the core database. It comprises the data that make the addressing system work, together with constructing areas, geographic coordinates, and administrative boundaries.
Its technical group and personal companions assist growth and upkeep underneath its course.
“The content-delivery provider serving the public website does not host or have administrative access to the core database,” NIPOST stated.
AWS helps ship and shield the general public web site however, in accordance to NIPOST, doesn’t maintain or handle the grasp postcode data. The database and its backups stay inside Nigeria.
What Nigeria’s cloud coverage says
NIPOST’s association relies on the National Digital Cloud Policy, launched by Communications Minister Bosun Tijani in August 2026, and NITDA’s supporting National Cloud Computing and Cloud Technical Guidelines.
The coverage distinguishes between public info and delicate authorities information, with completely different internet hosting necessities for every.
NIPOST considers public postcode lookups to fall underneath the coverage’s “Open” information class, which has no information residency restrictions. This permits the public-facing web site to use world infrastructure akin to AWS.
The core database is handled otherwise. NIPOST stated it applies controls in line with the coverage’s “Highly Sensitive” (Level 3) necessities, together with retaining data inside Nigeria and sustaining home disaster-recovery capabilities.
Using Galaxy Backbone additionally displays the coverage’s course for federal businesses to meet their cloud internet hosting wants via the federal government’s shared companies mannequin.
However, NIPOST stated it can nonetheless have interaction the Sovereign Government Cloud Governance Committee and NITDA on the system’s formal classification because the coverage’s sovereignty framework is carried out.
Formal classification remains to be a part of the method, despite the fact that NIPOST says its present internet hosting preparations observe the related Level 3 controls.
In July, TechCabal examined whether or not Nigeria’s home information centre business may assist the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) directive requiring banks, fintechs and cost corporations to transfer their transactional information from overseas cloud servers to infrastructure inside the nation by January 1, 2027. The directive is predicted to set off considered one of Nigeria’s largest cloud migrations.
NIPOST’s association displays a wider push to hold delicate info inside Nigeria.
The company added that its internet hosting selections steadiness safety, resilience, value, scalability and information sovereignty, with core infrastructure supplied by government-owned Nigerian supplier, Galaxy Backbone. It stated the internet hosting preparations can be reviewed as using NDAPS expands. It, nonetheless, didn’t disclose the contract particulars of the present hybrid association, arguing that they’re topic to public procurement guidelines.
Who controls the postcode database?
With the core database hosted domestically, the following query is who can entry or management it.
NIPOST stated it retains possession of NDAPS information and controls administrative privileges alongside Galaxy Backbone. The two organisations additionally handle the encryption keys defending the system.
Private contractors and technical companions, together with Milsat Technologies, would not have unrestricted entry. NIPOST stated service suppliers entry the system solely when needed to carry out their duties, underneath contractual confidentiality and data-protection obligations, role-based entry controls and audit logging.
Banks, logistics corporations and authorities businesses will join to NDAPS via software programming interfaces (APIs), permitting completely different software program platforms to change info. These integrations may let a financial institution confirm an tackle or a supply firm find a buyer’s constructing with out counting on casual landmarks.
NIPOST stated entry will probably be ruled by agreements and restricted to the situation info required for service supply.
“Personal data is not shared through these interfaces,” it stated.
Although the platform supplies location info slightly than private id data, how organisations mix that info with their current buyer databases will matter for privateness.
Can native infrastructure deal with the demand?
Keeping the database in Nigeria addresses the place the knowledge lives, however not essentially how reliably it may be accessed.
Galaxy Backbone will assist the infrastructure behind a system anticipated to serve banks, logistics corporations and authorities businesses via automated queries. As adoption grows, demand will enhance.
Nigeria’s home internet hosting atmosphere faces sensible challenges, together with unreliable energy provide, fibre cuts and community disruptions. Local suppliers should exhibit that they will keep companies and get better shortly when infrastructure fails.
NIPOST stated NDAPS has main databases, replicas, backups and disaster-recovery preparations inside Nigeria. It added that the system undergoes common testing and steady monitoring to restore companies following cyber incidents, infrastructure failures or lack of entry to a internet hosting atmosphere.
But having backup preparations is completely different from displaying they will stand up to a significant disruption. The actual take a look at will probably be how shortly the system can get better when tens of millions of customers and companies rely upon it.
The excellent information safety query
Another compliance query considerations the system’s information safety evaluation.
NIPOST confirmed that its Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) remains to be in progress and that it’s participating the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) on the system’s data-processing preparations.
A DPIA helps organisations establish privateness dangers related to programs that course of private info. NDAPS is designed to map buildings throughout Nigeria, making a nationwide location database that would turn out to be more and more helpful to banks, companies and authorities businesses.
Although NIPOST stated it doesn’t share private information via its APIs, location info can turn out to be extra revealing when mixed with different datasets, significantly these held by monetary establishments and authorities businesses.
While internet hosting the database on home servers satisfies information residency guidelines, location is simply half the equation. The true take a look at for NDAPS will probably be whether or not native infrastructure can ship the uptime, automated question speeds, and catastrophe restoration that banks and logistics corporations would want to make the system dependable.
