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Nigeria targets 30% growth in .ng domain adoption amid reforms, NiRA says

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2 hours ago

May 3, 2026

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The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) is rolling out a strategy to accelerate adoption of Nigeria’s country code top-level domain, .ng, setting a 30% year-on-year growth target and outlining reforms across marketing, governance, policy, and infrastructure.

At the centre of NiRA’s 2026 business plan is a push to expand the .ng domain namespace by increasing awareness and market penetration across Nigeria, according to the .ng domain name administrator and registry. The initiative forms part of a broader effort to reposition .ng as a core pillar of the country’s digital ecosystem, combining market expansion, institutional reforms, policy alignment, and infrastructure upgrades.

NiRA’s move comes amid a gap between Nigeria’s population and its domain name footprint. Despite having over 242 million people, Nigeria has recorded about 240,000 .ng domain registrations. By comparison, South Africa, with a population of about 65.4 million, has approximately 1.4 million domain registrations, while Kenya, with 58.6 million people, has about 115,000 domains registered.

NiRA’s move comes amid a gap between Nigeria’s population and its domain name footprint. Despite having over 242 million people, Nigeria has recorded about 240,000 .ng domain registrations. By comparison, South Africa, with a population of about 65.4 million, has approximately 1.4 million domain registrations, while Kenya, with 58.6 million people, has about 115,000 domains registered.

NiRA to drive .ng domain name uptake among Nigerians

NiRA says closing this gap is critical to advancing Nigeria’s digital economy and strengthening its national digital identity framework.

According to the registry, increased adoption of the .ng domain will support internet growth in Nigeria while enhancing local visibility for businesses and individuals seeking a trusted online presence.

To drive uptake, NiRA says it will intensify marketing efforts and awareness campaigns.

“This growth drive,” NiRA says, “will be supported by efforts to increase .ng brand visibility through targeted digital marketing campaigns and implement impactful corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives that promote digital identity and the use of .ng domains.”

The association is also prioritising improvements in registry infrastructure to support higher adoption levels, with a focus on enhancing system security, stability, and availability.

“The plan is to DNSSEC across the .ng zones to strengthen the domain name system security and invest in enhanced cybersecurity infrastructure to monitor threat detection, and response capabilities,” NiRA says.

To sustain these improvements, NiRA says it will strengthen the technical capacity of its team through training and knowledge development to manage a more complex and security-sensitive domain environment.

The registry is also seeking deeper collaboration with registrars and ecosystem partners to expand distribution channels and increase market reach.

Beyond market expansion, NiRA’s strategy signals structural changes in governance. Under its organisational capacity agenda, the association says it will align with global best practices by strengthening institutional effectiveness and separating governance from management functions.

“We will undertake a review of the existing NiRA constitution and remove executive management responsibilities currently assigned to the Board of Directors,” NiRA says, adding that plans are underway “to establish a C-Level Executive Management Team responsible for the day-to-day management and operational execution of the organisation.”

NiRA is also increasing engagement with policymakers to create an enabling environment for domain growth. The association says it will work with government institutions and stakeholders to promote policies that encourage adoption of the .ng domain among corporates, businesses, and individuals.

It also plans to advocate for legislative and regulatory measures to support the adoption, growth, and protection of Nigeria’s country code top-level domain.

As part of this effort, NiRA says it will promote the use of .ng domains across public sector institutions, including ministries, departments, and agencies at federal and sub-national levels, to deepen integration of the national domain within government digital infrastructure.

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Royal Exchange Shifts to Asset Management, Boosts Income to N1.7bn

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Business

Royal Exchange Shifts to Asset Management, Boosts Income to N1.7bn

Published

11 hours ago

May 3, 2026

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Royal Exchange Plc has accelerated its transition into an asset management-focused business, reporting a 5 percent increase in earned income to N1.7 billion, up from N1.57 billion in 2024, as the company begins to reap the benefits of its completed three-year transformation strategy.

The improved performance also saw profit after tax rise to N851 million, underscoring growing momentum in its restructured operations.

Speaking at the company’s 57th Annual General Meeting held virtually, Chairman Ikeme Osakwe revealed that the Group recorded a profit after tax of N851 million, reflecting improved financial performance.

Osakwe attributed the growth to the successful execution of a three-year transformation strategy, which concluded in 2024 and repositioned the company into an asset management-focused entity.

According to him, the strategic shift has begun to yield measurable results, with stronger financial trends and a more diversified portfolio. He noted that the next phase of the company’s journey will centre on deepening its asset management capabilities while driving growth and profitability across its investee companies.

He added that Royal Exchange aims to leverage its restructured portfolio to deliver long-term value, while evolving beyond its legacy status into a more agile and reliable partner for clients. The company, he said, is focused on building a culture rooted in transparency, disciplined risk-taking, and sustainable growth.

Osakwe also emphasised that the Group’s newly established structure will support its expansion beyond traditional insurance, enabling the development of products tailored to current market realities. He highlighted ongoing investments in talent and strategic partnerships as key to strengthening customer engagement and scaling operations profitably.

He expressed appreciation to the board and management team for their commitment over the past year, noting that their efforts were instrumental to the company’s achievements.

Looking ahead, he reaffirmed the company’s commitment to delivering long-term value and exceeding the expectations of investors.

Business

Uber wants to turn its millions of drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

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1 day ago

May 2, 2026

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Uber has a long-term ambition that goes well beyond shuttling passengers: the company eventually wants to outfit its human drivers’ cars with sensors to soak up real-world data for autonomous vehicle (AV) companies — and potentially other companies training AI models on physical-world scenarios.

Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber’s chief technology officer, revealed the plan in an interview at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event in San Francisco on Thursday night, describing it as a natural extension of a nascent program the company announced in late January called AV Labs.

“That is the direction we want to go eventually,” Naga said of equipping human drivers’ vehicles. “But first we need to get the understanding of the sensor kits and how they all work. There are some regulations — we have to make sure every state has [clarity on] what sensors mean, and what sharing it means.”

For now, AV Labs relies on a small, dedicated fleet of sensor-equipped cars that Uber operates itself, separate from its driver network. But the ambition is clearly much larger. Uber has millions of drivers globally, and if even a fraction of those cars could be transformed into rolling data-collection platforms, the scale of what Uber could offer the AV industry would dwarf what any individual AV company could assemble on its own.

The insight driving the program, Naga said, is that the limiting factor for AV development is no longer the underlying technology. “The bottleneck is data,” he said. “[Companies like Waymo] need to go around and collect the data, collect different scenarios. You may be able to say: in San Francisco, ‘At this school intersection, I want some data at this time of day so I can train my models.’ The problem for all these companies is access to that data, because they don’t have the capital to deploy the cars and go collect all this information.”

Becoming the data layer for the entire AV ecosystem is a pretty smart play, particularly considering Uber years ago abandoned its own ambitions to build self-driving cars (a move that co-founder Travis Kalanick has publicly lamented as a big mistake). Indeed, many industry observers have wondered if, without its own self-driving cars, Uber might one day be rendered irrelevant as AVs increasingly spring up around the globe.

The company currently has partnerships with 25 AV companies — including Wayve, which operates in London — and is building what Naga described as an “AV cloud”: a library of labeled sensor data that partner companies can query and use to train their models. Partners, which Uber plans to more aggressively invest in directly, can also use the system to run their trained models in “shadow mode” against real Uber trips, simulating how an AV would have performed without actually putting one on the road.

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“Our goal is not to make money out of this data,” Naga said. “We want to democratize it.”

Given the obvious commercial value of what Uber is building, that positioning may not last long. The company has already made equity investments in numerous AV players, and its ability to offer proprietary training data at scale could give it significant leverage over a sector that right now depends on Uber’s ride marketplace to reach customers.

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