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By Stella Odueme
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has unveiled the Nigeria Tech Outlook Report and Dashboard to provide credible data on the country's technology ecosystem and guide investment, policymaking and innovation.
The Director-General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, announced the initiative on the sidelines of the Digital Nigeria International Conference and Exhibition (DNICE) in Abuja.
He said the report was designed to address the shortage of reliable, locally generated data on Nigeria's technology sector, which has largely relied on information from the World Bank and other international institutions.
According to him, in a statement by the Director of Corporate Communications and Media Relations, Mrs. Hadiza Umar, in Thursday, the initiative will provide a dependable baseline for understanding the country's digital economy, identifying investment opportunities and supporting evidence-based policy decisions.
Abdullahi explained that NITDA had been collaborating with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to develop a comprehensive picture of the technology sector, adding that sustained cooperation between both institutions would be necessary to monitor Nigeria's digital transformation.
He observed that conventional measurements of the digital economy, which largely focus on the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector's contribution to national Gross Domestic Product, failed to capture the growing influence of technology across sectors such as finance and media.
Highlighting investment opportunities identified in the report, the NITDA chief pointed to healthcare, financial services and digital devices as areas with significant growth potential.
He disclosed that although more than 80 per cent of Nigerians had used telemedicine at some point, fewer than 20 per cent had actually accessed the service, indicating a substantial gap between demand and availability.
In the financial sector, he said more than 80 per cent of Nigerian adults had bank accounts, while fewer than 20 per cent had accessed digital credit.
He noted that digital technology could help address the challenges preventing small businesses from accessing loans by providing financial institutions with reliable transaction records and other information to assess their creditworthiness.
Abdullahi said the report would help investors understand market opportunities, unmet demand and potential risks without necessarily committing substantial resources to preliminary market research.
He announced that the publication would become an annual exercise, with the second edition expected to be ready by June 1, 2027.
He also disclosed plans to transform the dashboard into an interactive portal where investors, citizens and other stakeholders could access information, provide feedback and suggest improvements.
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The agency, he added, would strengthen collaboration with the NBS and other regulatory institutions to facilitate real-time data exchange and ensure that the portal remained updated.
Also speaking, the Statistician-General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, described the report as an important intervention in addressing the country's longstanding technology data gap.
He said it provided a consolidated source of evidence on how individuals and institutions across Nigeria accessed and utilised technology.
Adeniran disclosed that the NBS collaborated with NITDA to conduct a nationwide telephone survey using Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI).
The exercise covered 2,147 households and 539 primary healthcare facilities across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
He said the survey 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.