Itana, Nigeria’s—and Africa’s—first fully digital free zone, located in Alaro City within Lagos State’s Lekki Free Zone corridor, is reimagining the concept of special economic zones by shifting the focus from manufacturing to services, technology, and innovation.
At its core, Itana is a response to the urgent need to modernise how Nigeria and Africa enable business growth in a global digital economy. Traditional free zones across the continent have long revolved around industrial production and export-oriented manufacturing. But, as Adetayo Oduwole, Director of Business and Compliance at Itana, explains, that model left out an increasingly dominant part of the economy: services.
“We’ve left the service sector underexplored for too long,” he said in an interview with TechCabal. “With the way the world is going, powered by technology, Africa must tap into trade in services or risk falling further behind.”
That realisation drove Itana’s founding vision: to create a digital-first jurisdiction where companies can remotely incorporate, scale, and serve global markets without being bound by Nigeria’s historically rigid regulatory infrastructure. Inspired by models like Delaware in the U.S. and Dubai’s Internet City, Itana functions as a special administrative enclave tailored for digital businesses. It leverages Nigeria’s existing 30-year-old free zone regulations to avoid the bureaucratic delays of reinventing legislation.
The zone allows startups to register with a $2,000 incorporation fee and a yearly $1,150 renewal, including access to an official address for mailing, document processing, and collaborative activities. “We’ve streamlined everything,” Oduwole says. “From incorporation to regulation, the process is digital and global from day one. You can set up from Nairobi, London, or Yaba.”
But beyond paperwork, Itana is also anchored in place. Its first district, a 72,000-square-meter mixed-use area in Alaro City, is already under construction with backing from the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), which committed $100 million to phase one. The zone offers 24/7 power from gas-fired plants, piped gas, dual fiber-optic internet, clean water, and efficient city management. Oduwole calls it a “live-work-play” environment, with startup campuses, co-living spaces, outdoor work areas, and even biking trails to foster community and productivity.
Crucially, Itana isn’t just infrastructure but also policy innovation. It’s also the first free zone in Nigeria to prioritise regulatory support for the digital economy. The project partners with Future Africa, an early-stage venture capital firm founded by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder of Flutterwave, to fund and accelerate early-stage startups. The resulting ecosystem brings founders, regulators, policy advocates, and potential customers under one roof.
This multi-stakeholder approach is especially important for Nigeria’s growing tech sector, which often struggles with inconsistent regulation, complex taxation, and a lack of infrastructure. With more than 60% of Africa-bound venture capital flowing to Nigeria while only a fraction of startups scale beyond local boundaries, Itana is positioning itself as a bridge between local talent and global opportunity.
From brain drain to talent export
One of the most forward-looking aspects of Itana is its alignment with the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). By enabling Nigerian-registered service providers to deliver products across Africa without relocating their operations, Itana taps into a huge opportunity: a unified market of over a billion people. “Scaling across Africa is hard,” Oduwole says. “Different countries, different rules. We’ve built a framework that lets you offer services across the continent while remaining rooted in Nigeria.”
Talent is central to this plan. Through partnerships with Nigeria’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and the National Talent Export Programme (NATEP), Itana is helping to match trained Nigerian professionals with global employers. The goal: create 100,000 jobs in the next five years and establish Nigeria as a leader in cross-border service delivery, including business process outsourcing (BPO), software development, and digital design. “This isn’t about brain drain,” Oduwole said. “It’s about talent export—keeping Nigerians here while connecting them to global markets.”
The platform also addresses some of the structural issues plaguing Africa’s labour markets: job fraud, poor job matching, and inadequate training. By working with multiple education and training providers, Itana is not only placing talent, but it’s helping develop it. “We’re focused on making sure that when companies come into Itana, there’s a ready pipeline of skilled, credible talent,” says Oduwole. “And we want to do that with integrity.”
While it is still early days, Itana is starting to see some results. Despite broader narratives of companies exiting Nigeria, Oduwole says Itana has seen strong interest from both local and foreign firms, including African startups looking to expand, foreign investors exploring new markets, and Nigerian companies seeking easier ways to scale. “You’d be surprised how many foreign companies are coming to us asking if they can find talent, if they can scale here,” he says. “It’s a total shift in mindset.”
What sets Itana apart is not just its infrastructure or regulatory model, but its ecosystem-building philosophy. Rather than replicate itself across Nigeria, Itana’s goal is to build a working prototype—an African Delaware—that others can learn from. “We don’t need Delawares all over Nigeria,” Oduwole says. “We need one good model, tested and optimised, that others can build on in their own way.”
With Africa’s youth population projected to double by 2050 and global demand for digital services skyrocketing, Itana’s timing is critical. As the world races to digitise, Nigeria now has an opportunity to lead, not by copying others, but by designing something that works for its unique context.
“Itana is not just a zone. It’s a signal,” Oduwole said. “That Nigeria is open for digital business, and this time, we’re not playing catch-up. We’re setting the pace.”
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