Nigeria’s Digital Economy: Not Drifting, But Steering Towards Maturity
By Labaran Saleh
It has become fashionable in recent times to declare that Nigeria isn’t working, and the claim that the country’s digital economy is “drifting” ties in seamlessly with that zeitgeist. Fortunately, this critique is tidy, dramatic, and wrong. The reality is less theatrical but far more significant: Nigeria’s digital economy is not losing its way—it is maturing.
The real story is not one of decline, but of design—the deliberate construction of a framework that balances innovation with sovereignty, scale with safety, and openness with ownership.
A Coherent National Vision: The Ministry’s Framework
To claim that Nigeria’s digital leadership has “failed to articulate or enforce a Nigeria-First policy” is to ignore the most comprehensive reform effort the sector has ever seen. Under Dr. Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, the federal ministry has pursued a coherent, globally benchmarked strategy built around five pillars: Knowledge, Policy, Infrastructure, Innovation, and Capital.
This framework is not theoretical; it has produced measurable outcomes: deeper broadband penetration, the institutionalization of the Nigeria Startup Act, the expansion of digital literacy programs, and the creation of enabling environments for local innovation to thrive alongside global players.
The Ministry is championing Africa’s most audacious broadband project: building 90,000 kilometers of new fibre-optic backbone infrastructure under the federal government’s “Project Bridge” initiative. This plan would increase the country’s total terrestrial fibre from around 35,000 km today toward 125,000 km at maturity. When completed, the project will connect all 774 Local Government Areas, leverage the surplus capacity provided by eight existing submarine cable landings, and drive internet access toward 70 percent coverage while reducing costs by up to 60 percent.
Globally, this leadership has not gone unnoticed. In 2025, TIME Magazine named Dr. Bosun Tijani among the “TIME100 AI Leaders” shaping the future of artificial intelligence, recognizing his role in building bridges between government, academia, and industry. As one of only four Africans on the list, Dr. Tijani joins the prestigious ranks of Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Elon Musk of xAI, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta.
Today, Nigeria’s digital ministry now stands shoulder to shoulder with its counterparts in India, Singapore, and South Korea as one of the few public institutions actively aligning national innovation with global best practices. This is not drift—it is direction.
Regulatory Foresight and Market Stability
Equally misunderstood is the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) under Dr. Aminu Maida, which has quietly redefined the standard for regulatory foresight in emerging markets.
It may not have been obvious to critics that Nigeria’s telecoms industry was straining under a decade-long tariff freeze before Dr. Maida took over. The Commission subsequently approved the first sector-wide tariff adjustment in more than 11 years—about a 50% uplift after operators had sought steeper relief—explicitly to restore cost-reflective pricing and stabilize expansion plans.
The NCC has also doubled down on its National Broadband Plan, accelerated fiber rollout by engaging state governments on behalf of telcos, and convened operators to ensure shared infrastructure development. This strategy reduces duplication, lowers costs, and improves access.
Nigeria’s telecom revolution—the foundation upon which fintechs, startups, and AI ecosystems rest—remains one of the continent’s most liberal and competitive, precisely because the NCC understands that market stability and innovation are not opposites but partners.
Data Sovereignty and Digital Rights
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), under Dr. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has become the intellectual and operational center of Nigeria’s digital sovereignty agenda. For over a year, NITDA has led national consultations on data domiciliation, cloud policy, and digital sovereignty, bringing together regulators, private operators, and policymakers to align Nigeria’s frameworks with global standards like the EU GDPR and India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act.
Through initiatives such as the National Cloud Computing Policy and the Nigeria Data Strategy, NITDA has advanced the principle that data generated in Nigeria should, by default, reside in Nigeria—within secure, locally hosted data centers operated under Nigerian jurisdiction. These engagements have produced technical frameworks for data center development, cloud interoperability, and public-sector cloud migration, laying the groundwork for a resilient, homegrown cloud ecosystem.
NITDA’s sister agency, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), has also created one of Africa’s most comprehensive digital rights regimes, balancing user privacy with economic opportunity. The agency has secured millions of Naira in remediation fees from companies for data breaches and has been honored with several awards for its leadership in data protection and cybersecurity.
Scale and Collaboration, Not “Foreign Capture”
The nostalgic comparisons to earlier administrations miss the larger point. Nigeria’s digital ecosystem has evolved from an era of fintech experimentation to one of infrastructural consolidation. The fintech boom that produced Moniepoint, Kuda, and Flutterwave emerged when fixed broadband penetration was below 10%. Today’s leadership is working to accelerate broadband access to 70% within the next eight years—a scale of ambition never attempted before. To put it in perspective: if 40% broadband penetration created four unicorns, what will 70% unlock?
Where others see “foreign capture,” the Ministry, NCC, and NITDA see collaboration without compromise—a pragmatic model that engages global capital while aggressively building domestic capacity. Nigeria is not isolating itself from the world; it is negotiating from a position of strength.
In practice, the “Nigeria-First” agenda is visible everywhere: from NITDA’s cloud localization policies and the NCC’s infrastructure-sharing frameworks, to the Ministry’s AI readiness programs and open government innovation strategy. This is the kind of coherence that builds nations.
Dr. Tijani’s inclusion in TIME’s AI 100 list was not just personal recognition; it was validation of a national vision—that Africa must not only consume AI but co-create it. From convening global AI leaders in Lagos to advancing policy frameworks for ethical AI adoption, Nigeria’s Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy has firmly positioned the country in the global conversation about the next frontier of human progress.
And to be clear: Nigeria’s digital economy is not being sold off. It is being structured for scale. Regulators are modernizing under pressure; policymakers are recalibrating for a world where data, not oil, defines sovereignty. Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, key structural reforms are beginning to take root—the 90,000-kilometer national fiber project is being finalized, tax harmonization to simplify compliance is in play, and a stable fiscal policy environment is being pursued.
Together with the Broadband Alliance, startup funding expansion, tariff rationalization, and digital-skills acceleration programs, these reforms form the backbone of a new economic order powered by innovation and infrastructure.
The gains of these policies may not yet be evenly felt, but they are real—and they are compounding. Progress in a sector this complex is rarely dramatic.
Nigeria is not drifting—it is steering. Slowly, perhaps, but confidently forward.