Written by Isime Esene
The foundations for Nigeria’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom are currently being laid by the Ministry of Communications, Innovation & Digital Economy through sound policy reforms, digital infrastructure, talent development, innovation, and access to strategic investment.
Aligning closely with the Ministry’s strategic blueprint for Nigeria’s digital economy, which has guided the country’s digital transformation agenda under Dr. ‘Bosun Tijani, are the findings of a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report on AI preparedness and adoption across Sub-Saharan Africa.
The report, ‘Unlocking the Potential: AI in Sub-Saharan Africa,” estimates that widespread AI adoption could increase sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP by about 4 percent over the next decade. While acknowledging that the region’s capacity to adopt AI is constrained by structural bottlenecks, the IMF argues that these gains remain within reach if countries move quickly to strengthen the foundations for AI adoption.
Throughout the report, the IMF identifies knowledge and human capital, enabling policies and regulations, reliable digital and energy infrastructure, innovation and entrepreneurship supported by capital, and trade and regional integration as critical conditions for Sub-Saharan Africa to successfully adopt AI and translate it into broad-based economic gains. Interestingly the strategic blueprint for Nigeria’s Ministry of Communications, Innovation &Digital Economy is organised around five interconnected pillars: knowledge; policy; infrastructure; innovation, entrepreneurship and capital; and trade.
The reference to Nigeria’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) Programme, launched in late 2023 under Dr. Tijani’s leadership, which is to train three million Nigerians in digital and technical skills, acknowledges that Nigeria is already taking steps to build its digital and technical talent base and adapt to AI.
“The IMF’s analysis strongly validates the direction of our Strategic Blueprint. It confirms that the foundations we have been building – knowledge, sound policy, digital infrastructure, innovation and access to capital – are not isolated technology investments. They are essential inputs for productivity and economic growth across every sector,” Dr. Tijani said in response to the report.
Stakeholders and keen observers of the conversations and reforms taking shape within and outside of the Ministry of Communications, Innovation & Digital Economy would agree that the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (NAIS), National AI Trust, Nigerian AI Scaling Hub (NAISH), AI Collective, N-ATLAS, and the ATLAS Umoja, launched recently at the 2026 African Telecommunications Union Conference of Plenipotentiaries (CPL-26), are all policy initiatives by the ministry to hasten Nigeria’s AI adoption.
From strategy to governance, scaling, collaboration, indigenous AI infrastructure, and down to continental expansion, each of these initiatives represent a different layer of the AI ecosystem.
While the National AI Strategy provides the overarching framework for responsible AI development and deployment, the National AI Trust is designed to provide the institutional architecture for Nigeria’s next phase of AI adoption, investment and responsible innovation, bringing government, industry, academia and other stakeholders together to shape the country’s AI future.
Then there’s the Nigeria AI Scaling Hub which takes proven AI solutions beyond pilot stage, connecting government, innovators, researchers, private-sector partners and development organisations to scale high-impact applications in health, education and agriculture. Complementing this, the AI Collective brings together researchers, startups, industry, academia, government and civil society to foster innovation, build capacity, promote responsible AI governance and strengthen collaboration.
The Nigerian Atlas for Languages & AI at Scale (N-ATLAS) is Nigeria’s open-source, multilingual large language model, designed to ensure Nigerian languages, voices and cultural context are represented in AI systems and to make AI more locally relevant and inclusive. While the ATLAS Umoja expands the N-ATLAS vision into a pan-African initiative aimed at developing AI systems that better understand and represent African languages, cultures and knowledge systems.
Beyond their real-life impact on everyday Nigerians, these initiatives are also attracting international recognition, positioning Nigeria among the top countries across Sub-Saharan Africa making significant strides towards AI readiness and adoption. It is no surprise that Nigeria has ranked strongly on both the Global Index on Responsible AI (GIRAI) and the Oxford Insights Government AI Readiness Index.
Backed by national initiatives like the 3MTT, NAIS, and the AI Collective, Nigeria ranked first in Africa, and 38th out of 135 countries globally in the 2026 GIRAI, and climbed 31 places to 72nd out of 195 countries in the Oxford Insights Government AI Readiness Index. The country was recognised as a global ‘Bright Spot’ for advancing AI literacy and improving child protection data standards.
While compute capacity remains a major constraint on Africa’s ability to develop and adopt AI, however, the IMF makes an exception for Nigeria as one of three principal locations for data-centre infrastructure on the continent: “Compute infrastructure is also geographically concentrated within the region, with nearly half of Sub-Saharan Africa’s data centers located in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya.”
As an early-mover economy for AI adoption, Nigeria, because of the concentration of infrastructure and economic activity due to gains in power reforms, stronger internet connection, and concentration of data centers and cloud infrastructure, is positioned to capture early AI-related benefits.
Since his appointment by President Bola Tinubu in 2023, Dr. Tijani has led a concerted effort to shape the conversation around Nigeria’s digital economy and drive policies that position the country to harness AI across different sectors from education to healthcare, agriculture and government services.
To ensure that the investments made in the last couple of years “translate into productivity, jobs, competitiveness and inclusive growth for Nigerians,” Dr. Tijani has called for more investment in the digital economy as an enabler of the entire economy, collaboration across government and strong partnerships with the private sector, academia, development institutions and entrepreneurs.
While Nigerians are hopeful that all stakeholders will seek to collaborate on ensuring that Nigeria achieves AI preparedness, the next phase of implementation on its strategic blueprint for the Ministry of Communication, Innovation & Digital Economy, will focus on converting foundational investments into measurable outcomes across the economy. This will include accelerating business adoption, supporting sector-specific AI applications, expanding access to connectivity and computing infrastructure, and strengthening the link between technical training, productive employment and enterprise growth.
