NITDA unveils tech outlook report to attract digital investments

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has unveiled the Nigeria Tech Outlook Report and Dashboard to provide investors with reliable data on the country’s technology sector and unlock emerging opportunities in the digital economy.

The initiative is expected to address the longstanding shortage of credible, locally generated data on Nigeria’s technology landscape, providing a basis for policy formulation, investment decisions, regulation and innovation.

NITDA Director General, Kashifu Abdullahi, announced the launch on the sidelines of the Digital Nigeria International Conference and Exhibition (DNICE), stressing that Nigeria could no longer depend largely on data from the World Bank and other international institutions to understand and plan the development of its technology sector.

He said the country needed a reliable domestic database to measure the digital economy, identify market gaps and provide investors with the information required to assess opportunities and risks before committing capital.

Abdullahi explained that conventional measurements of the digital economy, which largely capture the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector in national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures, fail to reflect the growing influence of technology across sectors such as finance, healthcare and the media.

He identified healthcare technology, digital financial services and digital devices as areas offering significant investment potential, citing findings from the report that revealed a wide gap between demand for and access to digital services.

According to him, although more than 80 per cent of Nigerians have used telemedicine at some point, fewer than 20 per cent have actually accessed the service, highlighting an opportunity for investment in health technology.

He also pointed to opportunities in digital lending, noting that while more than 80 per cent of Nigerian adults have bank accounts, fewer than 20 per cent have accessed digital credit.

The NITDA chief said technology could help address the information and trust barriers preventing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from accessing loans, explaining that digital transaction records and business histories could provide financial institutions with better information to assess their creditworthiness.

He said the report would help investors identify underserved markets and areas of unmet demand without having to commit substantial resources to preliminary market research.

Abdullahi disclosed that the report would become an annual publication, with the second edition expected to be ready by June 1, 2027.

He added that NITDA would strengthen its collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and other regulatory institutions to improve data collection, exchange and availability.

The agency also plans to transform the report into an interactive portal where citizens, investors and other stakeholders can explore information, provide feedback and suggest improvements, supported by real time data exchange among regulators.

“We are going to continue working with the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS). We also want to work with other regulators to ensure we exchange real time data so we can always have an up to date portal for people to go and interact with,” he said.

Also speaking, the Statistician General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, described the report as a significant intervention in addressing Nigeria’s longstanding technology data gap.

He said the publication provides a consolidated source of evidence on how individuals and institutions across the country access and use technology, adding that it would establish a reliable foundation for measuring the country’s digital development.

Adeniran stressed that assessing technology’s contribution to the economy must go beyond conventional figures showing the performance of the ICT sector, given the increasing integration of digital solutions across different industries.

He disclosed that the NBS collaborated with NITDA to conduct a nationwide special telephone survey using Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI), covering 2,147 households and 539 primary healthcare facilities across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

The Statistician General said the exercise demonstrated the potential of digital tools to modernise official data collection, reaffirming the NBS’s commitment to working with NITDA to generate reliable statistics for national planning and development.