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From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
Nigeria has recorded significant gaps in access to telemedicine and digital credit despite growing demand for technology-driven services, according to a new report by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
The Nigeria Tech Outlook Report, launched by NITDA in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), revealed 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.
The report also showed that while more than 80 per cent of Nigerian adults had bank accounts, fewer than 20 per cent had accessed digital credit, highlighting significant investment opportunities in the country’s healthcare and financial technology sectors.
Speaking at the launch on the sidelines of the Digital Nigeria International Conference and Exhibition (DNICE), the Director-General of NITDA, Kashifu Abdullahi, said the findings exposed gaps between demand for digital services and their actual availability.
According to a statement from the agency, Abdullahi identified health technology as an area with strong investment potential, noting that Nigerians were willing to pay for quality healthcare services.
On digital credit, Abdullahi said technology could help address the trust and information gaps that often prevent small businesses from accessing loans.
He explained that digital records and transaction histories could give financial institutions better insights into the activities and creditworthiness of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The NITDA boss said the report was designed to provide investors with reliable information on market potential, unmet demand and areas where existing services had yet to reach enough Nigerians.
According to him, access to such data would reduce the cost of preliminary market research, enable investors to identify viable opportunities and assess risks before committing capital.
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Abdullahi said Nigeria had for years relied largely on data from the World Bank and other international institutions to guide decisions in the technology sector, stressing the need for credible, locally generated statistics to support policy formulation, regulation and investment.
He noted that the conventional measurement of the digital economy, which largely captures the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector in national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures, failed to reflect the extent to which technology now drives activities across other sectors, including finance and the media.
He said NITDA would make the Nigeria Tech Outlook Report an annual publication, with the second edition expected to be ready by June 1, 2027.
He also disclosed plans to develop the report into an interactive portal where citizens, investors and other stakeholders could explore information, submit feedback and suggest improvements.
“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. So, this is the reason we are doing this report, and we hope to hear more from you on how to improve it,” Abdullahi declared.
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 it provided a consolidated source of evidence on how Nigerians and institutions across the country access and use technology.
Adeniran disclosed that the NBS had worked with NITDA to conduct a nationwide 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.
He said the exercise demonstrated how digital tools could modernise official data collection, reaffirming the NBS’s commitment to working with NITDA to produce reliable statistics for national planning and development.
