Charles Falajiki is a research assistant at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, where he conducts research on cyber and international security policy as part of the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs cyber program. His work focuses on cyber offence-defence balance, escalation dynamics in cyberspace and the cyber capabilities of small states. He holds an M.Sc. in education (digital and social change) from the University of Oxford.

Ayantola Alayande is a researcher at the Global Center on AI Governance, where his work focuses on state-led approaches to AI governance, responsible AI policy measurement, and international AI cooperation. His previous work in data consulting and market research straddled the private sector and civic tech in Africa and the UK. His PhD research, funded by the Clarendon-Trinity College fund at the University of Oxford, examines how South Africa and India navigate geopolitical tensions in their AI infrastructure supply chain. Ayantola is a 2026 Emerging Technologies Fellow at the Oxford China Policy Lab and an honorary lecturer at the University of Cape Town.  

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Competing digital powers — the US, EU, and China — export technologies and contest the rules governing cyberspace, while third countries, particularly in Africa, face critical questions about infrastructure alignment and its consequences for cyber governance. Existing literature has predominantly treated this as an asymmetric power relationship where digital empires pursue digital expansionist goals through digital infrastructure export and norm entrepreneurship, casting other states as passive recipients shaped by geopolitical alignment and techno-dependency. We argue that this conception overlooks the agency of emerging digital powers navigating competing normative regimes. Focusing on Nigeria, we ask what factors shape digital infrastructure alignment and whether alignment predisposes regulatory preferences. We find that Nigeria practices what we term ‘cyber normative pluralism’ - the deliberate maintenance of concurrent, incompatible normative commitments across digital infrastructure partnerships, driven by domestic governance objectives rather than alignment with a single normative bloc. Infrastructure choices reflect cost considerations, domestic development objectives, partner availability, and existing trade relationships rather than geopolitical allegiance. This challenges assumptions about a Washington, Brussels, or Beijing effect, and establishes that emerging digital powers exercise agency through multi-partner diversification and selective policy borrowing that prioritises domestic development over normative consistency.

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