Cloud computing refers to both the resources provided over the internet as services and the systems software and hardware in the data centres that provide these resources. These resources can then be used by users for various purposes and provide the benefits of low ongoing cost, more computational power, and optimization of processes of computing among others. To take advantage of these benefits, adopting the cloud and the cloud computing paradigm is a necessary step and has the potential to transform Information Technology (IT) capabilities in developing and under-developed countries. However, in these countries, currently there are some adoption hurdles around this technology. Government agencies need to balance and regulate both hurdles and hype around the technology. Before cloud can be widely adopted, a systematic model of cloud adoption needs to be designed which can help the agencies in charge to navigate the hurdles and the hype. In this work, we have studied this problem in the context of adoption in Africa. The aim of this research is to investigate local cloud adoption threats, hurdles, synergies, opportunities, human capabilities, and other disciplines’ theories to design a model which will serve as a guide to the local cloud adoption hurdles in the African context, especially in Ethiopia. More specifically, the key intention and goal of this research is twofold: first, to assimilate the existing game theory and reverse engineering theory, that is, the part of economic theory into the cloud adoption techniques, and second, to look at the effects of open source cloud computing resources on the reduction of aforementioned hurdles via experimentation with OpenStack. The OpenStack is used as a test-bed for the designed mechanism for building a private cloud for the targeted organization to examine the competence of IT experts and pave the way for future research. The model is designed through various context-based competence possibilities for academia and government. It can be used to mitigate the bottlenecks that arise from the lack of up-to-date cloud knowledge, the lack of a context-based model, the lack of government control, and the lack of well-poised competent IT experts. These bottlenecks lead to the lack of hands-on technical skills, confusion in cloud adoption lack of standard models, under-utilizations of the opportunities of open source cloud platforms, and loose interpretations around the security, trust, legal, regulatory model, control mechanism, and privacy issues. This research is foundational in nature which assimilates and translates well-established theories of other disciplines into a theory of systematic cloud adoption. The assimilated model minimizes the cloud adoption hurdles by maximizing government power to facilitate, regulate, understand the cloud adoption complexity, and control the cloud adoption rate. It is also a useful lens for cloud experts to see how each hurdle is paired up with some opportunities as it maximizes their competence.