How hosting locally reduces the impact of forex fluctuation

By Bankole Orija
 When organizations want to host their content, they look for a hosting platform that gives them efficient, high speed, and cost-effective service, so their content can be accessed quickly.
But while businesses and agencies in Nigeria have this same expectation, many unwittingly opt for
service providers that cost them this speed and cost-effectiveness they crave. They host their data with foreign data centers.
Several consequences follow from hosting with foreign service providers. Upload and download times could be slower because the data centers are far away from the business that stores and accesses the data. There are data sovereignty issues as well; it’s not always clear whether it’s the business’s home country or the data center’s host country that has administrative rights over the data.
There’s another problem that businesses get exposed to when they use foreign hosting platforms. It’s a problem with unstable currency exchange rates.
Organizations also have to pay for the hosting services provided from beyond their borders in foreign currency. If a company in Nigeria hosts its content with a cloud firm in the United States, it will pay that firm for its services in dollars.
According to the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), the country loses up to ₦60 billion worth of foreign exchange to other countries every year as payments for web hosting services. As of 2016, less than 2% of domain names were registered in Nigeria.
There’s a problem with this. If most establishments with a web presence in Nigeria rely on foreign hosting, they will be exposed to fluctuations in foreign exchange. If the dollar becomes more expensive relative to the naira, they will have to spend more to pay hosting fees.
For instance, if company A in Nigeria hosts its website with a hosting firm B in the United States. The Nigerian company A pays the hosting firm B $700 annually for its hosting services.
If the current dollar-naira exchange rate is ₦360 to $1, the Nigerian company will be spending an equivalent of ₦252,000 on hosting in one year.
But if the naira slumps and the exchange rate becomes ₦400 to $1, the Nigerian firm will have to pay ₦280,000 in hosting fees in a year. That’s a difference of ₦28,000.