Nigeria and the AI Race: Heavy on Talent, Light on Infrastructure

By Elvis Eromosele

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming the new engine of global growth, reshaping economies, redefining jobs, and redrawing competitive advantage. But as the AI era accelerates, a hard truth is emerging: Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is running the race with promise, but without the necessary tools.

The World Bank’s Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025 paints a sobering picture of a world divided not just by income, but by access to the foundations of artificial intelligence, what the report describes as the “4Cs”: connectivity, compute, context, and competency.

Nigeria’s digital economy rests on fragile foundations. While internet penetration has improved, only 54 per cent of people in lower-middle-income countries had internet access in 2024, compared to 93 per cent in high-income countries. Even more striking is the data usage gap: Nigerians operate in an environment where average per capita data consumption is closer to 100GB annually, far below the 1,400GB recorded in advanced economies.

This gap matters. AI systems are data-hungry, requiring fast, reliable, and affordable internet, something still unevenly available across Nigerian cities and almost absent in many rural communities.

If data is the new oil, then computing power is the refinery, and Nigeria owns very little of it. The report reveals that 77 per cent of global data centre capacity is located in high-income countries, while low- and middle-income countries share just 23 per cent. Nigeria, like most African nations, relies heavily on imported cloud services hosted abroad.

This dependence raises costs, limits local innovation, and poses data sovereignty concerns, particularly as government services, fintech, and health systems increasingly rely on AI-driven platforms.

Another invisible disadvantage lies in data relevance. More than 50 per cent of global AI training datasets are in English, while African languages, including Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo, remain severely underrepresented. As a result, many AI tools fail to understand local accents, cultural nuances, or Nigeria’s informal economy realities.

Without deliberate investment in local data creation, Nigeria risks deploying AI systems that are powerful but poorly suited to its social and economic context.

Nigeria’s strongest asset may be its people. AI-related job demand is rising faster in developing economies than in rich ones, with vacancies growing by 11 per cent in LMICs between 2021 and 2024. However, the report also flags Nigeria as one of the countries experiencing brain drain, with skilled talent outflows three to four times higher than inflows.

This creates a paradox: Nigeria trains digital talent, but other economies reap the benefits.

The World Bank argues that Nigeria does not need to lead global AI breakthroughs to benefit from AI. Instead, it can focus on “small AI”, affordable, localised solutions for agriculture, education, healthcare, and public services.

Strategic investments in broadband infrastructure, regional data centres, digital skills training, and local language datasets could allow Nigeria to leapfrog traditional barriers and build an AI ecosystem tailored to its realities.

The message is clear: AI will not wait for Nigeria to catch up. The choices made today will determine whether the country becomes a creator in the AI economy or remains merely a consumer.

You can download the full report here: Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025, Strengthening AI Foundations