Nigeria's Postcode Database Splits Hosting Between AWS and Galaxy Backbone

Nigeria's new digital postcode system runs on a hybrid setup: Amazon Web Services delivers the public website, while the core database sits on government-owned Galaxy Backbone servers inside the country.

The National Digital Addressing System (NDAPS) launched on October 1 with the promise of replacing informal, landmark-based navigation with precise 11-character alphanumeric codes. The system aims to improve e-commerce deliveries, enable address verification for banking and identity services, and assign unique digital postcodes to every addressable building nationwide.

The Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) leads the initiative under the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy.

The hosting arrangement became public after TechCabal ran technical checks on postcode.gov.ng's domain name system records. They pointed to AWS infrastructure in the United States — awkward timing for a country tightening its data sovereignty rules.

NIPOST moved fast to clarify.

"The system has distinct layers," NIPOST spokesperson Ibrahim Musa told TechCabal by email. "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 does AWS actually handle?

AWS operates infrastructure across 247 countries. It opened its first Nigerian office in Lagos in 2022 and has invested in an AWS Local Zone in Lagos to support local customers. The company declined to confirm the NIPOST relationship, saying it doesn't disclose customer relationships without permission.

"AWS is sovereign-by-design," AWS Communications Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa Sonwabise Mzinyathi said in an email. "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 points to its Nitro System, which uses specialised hardware and firmware to protect workloads on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) — including from AWS employees themselves. Customers can also manage their 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," Mzinyathi said, "retaining exclusive control over cryptographic material."

AWS says its infrastructure is built to survive supply chain disruptions, network interruptions and natural disasters: "We've instilled cloud resilience into our infrastructure, service design and deployment, operational model, and mechanisms to build more resilient cloud architectures."

But those controls don't decide where data lives. That depends on how the customer configures its system.

Is the database itself abroad?

No — and NIPOST is explicit about the split.

"The public website, postcode.gov.ng, uses AWS's global content delivery and web-protection services, a standard approach used by many government and financial platforms to keep public portals fast and protected," NIPOST told TechCabal. Those services speed up page loads and block distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Galaxy Backbone hosts and manages the core database, which holds building locations, geographic coordinates and administrative boundaries. Its technical team and private partners handle development and maintenance.

"The content-delivery provider serving the public website does not host or have administrative access to the core database," NIPOST said. The database and its backups remain within Nigeria.

What does Nigeria's cloud policy require?

The arrangement follows the National Digital Cloud Policy, released by Communications Minister Bosun Tijani in August 2026, plus NITDA's National Cloud Computing and Cloud Technical Guidelines. The policy separates public information from sensitive government data.

NIPOST treats public postcode lookups as "Open" data with no residency restrictions — which is why AWS can serve the website. The core database falls under "Highly Sensitive" (Level 3) requirements: records stay in Nigeria, with domestic disaster-recovery capabilities. Using Galaxy Backbone also matches the policy's push for federal agencies to use the government's shared services model.

NIPOST says it will still engage the Sovereign Government Cloud Governance Committee and NITDA on the system's formal classification.

The backdrop matters. In July, TechCabal examined whether Nigeria's domestic data centre industry can support the Central Bank of Nigeria's directive requiring banks, fintechs and payment companies to move transactional data off foreign cloud servers by January 1, 2027 — expected to trigger one of Nigeria's largest cloud migrations. NIPOST didn't disclose contract details, citing public procurement rules, but said hosting decisions balance security, resilience, cost, scalability and sovereignty, and will be reviewed as NDAPS expands.

Who controls the data?

NIPOST retains ownership of NDAPS data and controls administrative privileges alongside Galaxy Backbone. The two also manage the encryption keys. Contractors, including Milsat Technologies, get access only when necessary, under confidentiality obligations, role-based access controls and audit logging.

Banks, logistics companies and government agencies will connect via APIs — letting a bank verify an address or a courier locate a building without landmark guesswork. Access stays limited to location data required for service delivery.

"Personal data is not shared through these interfaces," NIPOST said. Still, location data becomes more revealing when combined with datasets held by financial institutions and government agencies — and NIPOST confirmed its Data Protection Impact Assessment is still in progress, with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission engaged on processing arrangements.

NIPOST says NDAPS has primary databases, replicas, backups and disaster recovery inside Nigeria, with regular testing and continuous monitoring. But backups on paper differ from performance under a major disruption. With unreliable power, fibre cuts and network failures all too common in Nigeria's hosting environment, the real test arrives when millions of users depend on the system — and domestic infrastructure has to deliver the uptime, query speeds and recovery that banks and logistics firms will demand.