NITDA has given Nigeria its first national scorecard for the digital economy, and the grades are uneven. Director-General Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi unveiled the Nigeria Tech Outlook Report 2026 on Wednesday at the Digital Nigeria International Conference and Exhibition (DNICE) in Abuja. A public dashboard launched alongside it.
The headline finding is a gap between holding and using. About 86.5% of Nigerian adults have a financial account. Only 12% accessed digital credit in the past 12 months, and just 6.6% bought goods online in the previous three.
How the Report Was Built and What It Covers
The report tracks financial services, telecommunications, commerce and trade, e-government and e-health. It also measures digital access, skills, trust and inclusion. Inuwa described it as a national baseline, and he said NITDA will repeat the exercise every year to review targets and adjust policy.
The evidence base is a mix of fieldwork and records. According to Inuwa, the research drew on 2,147 household interviews, 539 health facility interviews, 15 key informant interviews and 10 administrative records from relevant institutions.
The report builds on the measurement system NITDA began validating in July. TechMoonshot reported then that the framework carries 81 core indicators across five priority sectors. Researchers from Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones built it with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
What the Numbers Say About Smartphones, Services and Fraud
Device use is still thin. The report found that 40.6% of adults personally used a smartphone. Government services fared worse: 17.9% of respondents used them online in the past year.
Demand looks stronger than supply in health. Some 75.9% of adults said they would use telemedicine if it were available. Only 11.3% have insurance coverage, which limits what any digital health service can charge.
Trust is the sharpest problem. About 13.1% of respondents said they had experienced digital financial fraud. Inuwa said that figure shows the need for stronger consumer protection.
Where the Report Meets the Investor Pitch
NITDA is pitching the data to capital. Inuwa said investors can use it to find opportunities in payments, connectivity, digital devices, e-commerce, logistics, e-government and digital health. He also named the constraints: electricity supply, digital skills, affordability, interoperability and consumer protection.
Those constraints are the story, not a footnote. They explain why accounts are common but online purchases are rare. An investor reading the 6.6% figure is reading the cost of power, devices and data as much as a lack of demand.
The numbers also sit awkwardly beside headline output. TechMoonshot’s Digital Economy in Nigeria 2025 report put the sector’s contribution at more than ₦7 trillion in the first quarter of 2025, or 14.19% of GDP. That share rests heavily on telecoms and banks, which the NBS counts as the digital economy. The household data suggests the benefits reach individual Nigerians far more slowly.
Questions About the Sample and the Scorekeeper
A household sample of 2,147 is modest for a country of more than 200 million people. The figures released so far do not include state-level breakdowns or margins of error. Without them, investors cannot tell whether 40.6% smartphone use holds in Kano the way it does in Lagos.
Definitions matter too. A KPMG study reported in September put smartphone ownership at 75% in 2025. “Personally used” and “owned” are different measures, but two numbers that far apart will confuse anyone sizing a market.
Social commerce is another blind spot. A report TechMoonshot covered in May said 14 million Nigerian small businesses use Meta’s apps, though Meta commissioned that research. The public summaries of the new report do not say how it treats purchases completed over chat apps and social media. If those sales count as offline, the 6.6% figure understates real activity.
Then there is independence. NITDA runs digital policy and wrote the scorecard that will judge that policy. The NBS role in the underlying framework helps, but the launch coverage credits NITDA alone. Clear public answers on who ran the fieldwork and who audits the results would strengthen the report’s authority.
What to Watch Next
The test comes with the second edition. NITDA needs to publish questionnaires, sampling methods and, ideally, the underlying microdata. It also needs to show movement on the metrics it has chosen, from digital credit to online service use.
The dashboard’s feedback function is a useful start. The Nigeria Tech Outlook Report will earn lasting credibility only if outsiders can check its work and if next year’s numbers move for reasons the agency can explain.
