The International Monetary Fund has identified Nigeria as one of Africa’s leading artificial intelligence economies, citing the country’s progress on policy development and initiatives aimed at strengthening its digital and innovation ecosystem.
Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy Bosun Tijani described the recognition as an encouraging signal of Nigeria’s readiness for the opportunities AI presents, and framed it as continuous with the country’s showings on the Global Index on Responsible AI and the Oxford Government AI Readiness Index — both of which measure AI governance and preparedness rather than raw infrastructure capacity.
Tijani was careful to flag the qualifier attached to the IMF’s assessment. The Fund’s work on AI in sub-Saharan Africa emphasises that sustained investment in electricity, broadband infrastructure and digital skills is what will determine whether the region converts AI potential into economic gain — the same three constraints the IMF identified in its recent finding that faster AI adoption could lift Africa’s GDP by as much as 4% over the next decade, against just 0.2% on the current trajectory.
The minister used the moment to set out what the federal government has built over the past two years. That roll-call includes the National AI Strategy, developed through a collaborative process involving researchers, entrepreneurs and policymakers from Nigeria and abroad; the National AI Trust, which Tijani has described as the first institution of its kind globally; the AI Collective; the Nigeria AI Scaling Hub; the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme; and Project BRIDGE, the initiative expanding the country’s fibre-optic infrastructure.
The framing Tijani applied is one iAfrica has heard from him consistently: that Nigeria’s objective is not merely to adopt AI technologies developed elsewhere but to develop and scale AI solutions addressing local challenges. He said the government remains committed to working with the private sector, academic institutions, development partners and technology innovators on digital infrastructure, skilled talent and responsible AI adoption.
The IMF recognition lands during an unusually dense run of Nigerian AI milestones. Tijani took one of eight African seats on the newly launched AI for Good Global Commission in July, alongside Namibia’s Emma Theofelus and Togo’s Cina Lawson. Nigerian fintech Nearpays became the first African startup to win the UN’s AI for Good Innovation Factory grand finale earlier this week. And the GSMA launched ATLAS Umoja AI with Nigeria and four other governments this week — an initiative built directly on Nigeria’s own open-source N-ATLAS language model, with Tijani using the Abuja launch to note that fewer than 2% of Africa’s languages currently receive meaningful support from modern AI platforms.
The gap between Nigeria’s policy and governance standing and its infrastructure position remains the substance of the IMF’s caveat. Nigeria ranked 72nd globally on the 2025 Oxford Insights Government AI Readiness Index — up from 141st three years earlier — but no sub-Saharan African country scores above 56 out of 100 on the index’s AI infrastructure pillar, against 89.27 for the United States. Unreliable electricity supply, limited data-centre capacity, hardware shortages and patchy high-speed connectivity are the constraints the IMF and Oxford Insights have both identified, and they are the constraints Project BRIDGE and the country’s parallel data-centre investments are attempting to close.
Whether the initiative list Tijani set out converts into the infrastructure and skills base the IMF says the region needs — rather than remaining a well-designed policy architecture running ahead of its physical foundations — is the question the next round of index rankings will answer.
