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Earth Observation Data Sovereignty in Nigeria: Reconciling the Data Protection Act 2023 with the National Space Regulatory Framework
Subject area: Science,Engineering and Technology · Area of research: Space Technology and Data Protection
Abstract
Nigeria is about to acquire a new generation of earth observation satellites. Its space agency has said that three optical satellites will image at sub-meter resolution and that radar satellites will image at one meter and finer. Imagery at that scale can show individual homes, compounds, farms and vehicles, and once it is linked to land records, farm registers or patterns of movement it can describe identifiable people. This article asks how Nigerian law treats earth observation data that has become personal data, and whether the national space regime and the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 work together. I read the statutes, the 2025 licensing handbook, the 2025 implementation directive, the United Nations remote sensing principles and the scholarship on space-based data. On the texts I reviewed, the two regimes were built in different institutions and do not refer to each other. The article makes three contributions: a mapping of the United Nations data tiers (primary data, processed data, analyzed information) onto Nigerian legal triggers; an analysis of four friction points, namely controller identification, offshore processing, the national security exemption and sovereign access to foreign-sourced data; and a set of recommendations that includes a joint protocol between the space agency and the data protection regulator, data governance conditions for licensed processors, and a tiered national data policy adopted before the new satellites enter service.
Keywords
earth observation; remote sensing; data protection; NASRDA; Nigeria Data Protection Act; data sovereignty; space law
How to cite this paper
@article{1724811,
author = {Mohammed Nana},
title = {Earth Observation Data Sovereignty in Nigeria: Reconciling the Data Protection Act 2023 with the National Space Regulatory Framework},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2026},
volume = {10},
number = {5},
pages = {1066-1072},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1724811.pdf},
abstract = {Nigeria is about to acquire a new generation of earth observation satellites. Its space agency has said that three optical satellites will image at sub-meter resolution and that radar satellites will image at one meter and finer. Imagery at that scale can show individual homes, compounds, farms and vehicles, and once it is linked to land records, farm registers or patterns of movement it can describe identifiable people. This article asks how Nigerian law treats earth observation data that has become personal data, and whether the national space regime and the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 work together. I read the statutes, the 2025 licensing handbook, the 2025 implementation directive, the United Nations remote sensing principles and the scholarship on space-based data. On the texts I reviewed, the two regimes were built in different institutions and do not refer to each other.
The article makes three contributions: a mapping of the United Nations data tiers (primary data, processed data, analyzed information) onto Nigerian legal triggers; an analysis of four friction points, namely controller identification, offshore processing, the national security exemption and sovereign access to foreign-sourced data; and a set of recommendations that includes a joint protocol between the space agency and the data protection regulator, data governance conditions for licensed processors, and a tiered national data policy adopted before the new satellites enter service.},
keywords = {earth observation; remote sensing; data protection; NASRDA; Nigeria Data Protection Act; data sovereignty; space law},
month = {November},
}