The numbers look impressive on the surface. A Google and Ipsos survey published earlier this year found that 88 per cent of Nigerian adults have now used an AI chatbot, an 18-point surge from 2024. Another study by Zoho found that 93 per cent of Nigerian organisations have already begun their AI journey. Read those figures quickly and Nigeria sounds like a country charging headlong into the future. Read them more slowly, and a more complicated picture emerges.
Because beginning a journey is not the same as completing one. Trying a chatbot once or twice is not the same as weaving it into the daily running of a business. And for the overwhelming majority of Nigeria’s small and medium enterprises, which account for 96.9 per cent of businesses and contribute 46.32 per cent of national GDP according to the SMEDAN and PwC MSME Survey 2024, artificial intelligence remains something they have heard about, briefly experimented with, and quietly set aside.
The gap between awareness and sustained use is the real story. While adoption soars in headline terms, only 27 per cent of Nigerians say they know “a lot” about AI. Enthusiasm is running well ahead of understanding, and in business that tends to end in disappointment. Entrepreneurs sign up for tools they cannot fully operate, produce results they cannot use, and conclude that the technology simply does not work for them. Most of the time, the technology is not the problem.
