There is a particular kind of economic trap that is easy to walk into and difficult to name until you are already inside it. It does not announce itself. It arrives dressed as progress, as growth, as the encouraging sight of a country embracing new technology with enthusiasm and speed. Nigeria is currently walking into that trap with artificial intelligence, and the people least likely to notice are the business owners doing the most enthusiastic adopting.
A new review published this week, the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Nigeria: A Macro and Micro Economic Review, puts the picture in terms that deserve more attention than they have received. More than 70 per cent of Nigerians have interacted with generative AI tools. Ninety-three percent of surveyed organisations say they have begun adopting AI technologies. Nigeria ranks 38th globally and first in Africa on the Global Index on Responsible AI, a jump of 42 places in two years. By almost every adoption metric available, Nigeria looks like a country sprinting ahead.
The report’s warning sits quietly underneath those figures. Nigeria remains largely a consumer of technologies developed abroad, exposing critical sectors to external control and limiting the country’s ability to capture the full economic value of the AI revolution. In plain terms: Nigerians are using AI enthusiastically and the companies building that AI, almost entirely foreign, are the ones collecting the economic reward.
