By BONIFACE AKARAH

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has launched the Nigeria Tech Outlook Report and Dashboard, a new initiative designed to provide investors, policymakers and other stakeholders with reliable data on Nigeria’s technology sector and identify opportunities in the digital economy.

The report, unveiled on the sidelines of the Digital Nigeria International Conference and Exhibition (DNICE) in Abuja, highlights significant gaps in areas including healthcare technology, financial services and digital devices, according to NITDA.

The Director-General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, said the initiative was developed to address the shortage of credible, locally generated data needed to guide investment, policy and innovation in Nigeria’s technology sector.

Abdullahi said Nigeria had largely relied on data from the World Bank and other international institutions for decision-making in the technology sector, stressing the need for locally generated baseline data.

“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,” he said.

According to the NITDA DG, the report indicates that more than 80 per cent of Nigerians have used telemedicine at some point, while fewer than 20 per cent have actually accessed the service, suggesting a significant gap between demand and availability.

He identified health technology as an area with strong investment potential, particularly because of Nigerians’ willingness to pay for quality healthcare services.

The report also identified opportunities in digital financial services, with Abdullahi saying that although more than 80 per cent of Nigerian adults had bank accounts, fewer than 20 per cent had accessed digital credit.

He said technology could help address some of the trust and information gaps that prevent small and medium-sized businesses from accessing credit.

According to him, digital transaction records and business histories could provide financial institutions with better information about the activities and creditworthiness of small businesses, potentially improving access to finance.

Abdullahi said the report was intended to give investors a clearer understanding of market potential, unmet demand and areas where existing digital services had yet to reach sufficient numbers of Nigerians.

He added that access to such information could reduce the resources investors spend on preliminary market research while helping them assess opportunities and risks before committing capital.

The NITDA boss also said the conventional measurement of Nigeria’s digital economy, which largely focuses on the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector’s contribution to national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), does not fully capture the role technology now plays across sectors such as finance and media.

He said a broader approach was required to properly measure technology’s contribution to economic activity and identify areas where innovation could deliver greater impact.

Abdullahi said NITDA had been working with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the technology sector and ensure that relevant data was continuously generated and shared.

He announced that the Nigeria Tech Outlook Report would become an annual publication, with the second edition expected by June 1, 2027.

He also disclosed plans to transform the report into an interactive portal through which citizens, investors and other stakeholders could explore data, provide feedback and suggest improvements.

The portal, he said, would be supported by real-time data exchange among NITDA, NBS and other regulatory institutions to keep the information updated.

Also speaking, the Statistician-General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, described the report as a major intervention in addressing Nigeria’s longstanding technology data gap.

Adeniran said the report provided a consolidated source of evidence on how Nigerians and institutions across the country access and use technology.

He said the report would provide a foundation for measuring the country’s digital development and welcomed the plan to update and expand it annually.

The Statistician-General said measuring technology’s contribution to the economy should go beyond figures showing the performance of the ICT sector.

He disclosed that the NBS 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 Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

Adeniran said the exercise demonstrated how digital tools could modernise official data collection, while reaffirming the NBS’s commitment to working with NITDA to produce reliable statistics for national planning and development.