Country overview: Nigeria - Mobile investment and innovation in Africa's most populous nation

In the GSMA Intelligence - Mobile for Development (M4D) Impact country overview series, we analyse the evolution and outlook of national mobile markets in the developing world. Each report covers a single country, combining data analysis with on-the-ground interviews to understand why that mobile market has developed as it has, and what the future holds. Covering themes of operator growth and competition dynamics, it provides analysis of indicators affecting adoption and usage, such as network coverage and investment, handsets, mobile data and value added services (VAS).

We particularly focus on operator attitudes to investing in VAS that aim to improve people’s lives in verticals such as health, education and finance. These M4D VAS are becoming increasingly important for operators in emerging markets, enabling them to forge customer loyalty with mid and low-income, previously unconnected subscribers. With the projected rise in the number of people using mobile data over the next five years, forming such relationships now will be key to strengthening operators’ place in the data value chain in the future.

This country overview assesses Nigeria. It is the most populous country in Africa and after rebasing its GDP this year, it is now also biggest economy on the continent. However, the country continues to experience income inequality and fares poorly on most human development indicators. Whether you are comparing Nigeria to its geographic neighbours or to other markets with similar dynamics, mobile penetration is surprisingly low. However, due to various factors including high access rates of over 50% of the population (those who use a mobile despite not owning one), data consumption growth, a rise in digital entrepreneurship, and a large youthful population Nigeria presents a growing opportunity for investment and innovation. We believe market-led investment from mobile operators in services that improve livelihoods will come, but this takes time. In the short to medium term there is a key opportunity for large international donors and the impact investment community to support and demonstrate commercial viability of these services with clear potential to drive socio-economic improvement.