Nigeria’s AI Usage Trails Global Average, Raises Fresh Concerns Over Infrastructure Gap

A new report by Microsoft has shown that Nigeria and much of Africa are still trailing in global adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), with weak electricity supply, internet access, and digital skills identified as major barriers to the continent’s participation in the fast-expanding digital economy.

In its Global AI Diffusion Q1 2026 Trends and Insights report, Microsoft said global AI usage rose to 17.8 per cent of the world’s working-age population in the first quarter of 2026, up from 16.3 per cent in the second half of 2025, reflecting a broad acceleration in the use of generative AI tools across economies.

However, Nigeria’s adoption rate stood at just 10.1 per cent in Q1 2026, below both the global average and the 15.4 per cent average recorded across countries in the Global South. The report placed Nigeria among a cluster of lower-adoption economies, indicating that Africa’s largest economy risks missing out on the productivity gains being driven by AI worldwide.

Microsoft stated that the gap between advanced and developing economies is widening, noting that AI adoption in the Global North reached 27.5 per cent in Q1 2026, compared to 15.4 per cent in the Global South.

The company said, “This widening divide reflects the systemic challenges facing the Global South, where limited access to reliable electricity, internet connectivity, and digital skills continues to constrain adoption. Until these foundational gaps are addressed, the benefits of generative AI will remain unevenly distributed, risking a deepening of existing global inequalities.”

The report’s findings have significant implications for Nigeria, where policymakers are pushing digital transformation across finance, education, healthcare and public services, but continue to face infrastructure deficits that limit large-scale technology uptake.

Despite a growing startup ecosystem in Lagos and rising investment in AI-enabled services across sectors, experts say that an inconsistent power supply, expensive broadband access, and low digital literacy outside major urban centres could constrain the country’s ability to compete in the next phase of the global technology economy.

The report noted that the world’s AI leaders are concentrated in advanced economies, with the United Arab Emirates leading at 70.1 per cent adoption, followed by Singapore at 63.4 per cent, while the United States climbed to 31.3 per cent.

While for Africa, South Africa emerged as the continent’s highest-ranked market in the report with 23.1 per cent AI adoption, while countries such as Egypt and Senegal posted 14.8 per cent and 13.9 per cent, respectively, highlighting a gradual but uneven spread across the continent.

Microsoft further observed that language accessibility is becoming a key driver of AI adoption globally, as improved support for local languages makes AI tools more relevant for everyday communication, education and content creation.

“One of the key drivers of the surge appears to be the stronger support for local languages and multimodal interaction that has expanded the relevance of AI across diverse user groups,” it stated.

The company’s reference to improved performance in languages including Yoruba may hold particular relevance for Nigeria, where experts believe local-language AI models could boost adoption among non-English speakers and expand use cases in education, agriculture and public information systems.

The report also linked AI’s growing economic impact to software development, noting that global GitHub code uploads rose by 78 per cent year-on-year in Q1 2026 as AI-assisted coding tools became mainstream. This, it said, is accelerating software creation and could expand demand for digital jobs rather than reduce it in the short term.

Meanwhile, the findings underscore the urgency that Nigeria needs to close gaps in electricity, broadband and digital skills if the country is to leverage AI for economic growth and avoid widening its technology gap with leading markets. Even as experts alluded that without targeted investments in infrastructure and local talent development, Africa’s role in the global AI economy may remain largely that of a consumer rather than a creator.