Scope: This report assesses the current adoption of AI in Nigeria, with particular attention to ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude; usage patterns; demographic and regional disparities; enterprise adoption; and the policy environment.

Executive Summary

Nigeria is emerging as one of the most AI-engaged countries in the Global South, especially among people who are already online and digitally active. In the Google/Ipsos multi-country AI survey, 88% of Nigerian respondents said they had used an AI tool in the previous 12 months, and 84% said they had used generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. Nigerian respondents also reported especially high use of AI for learning, work, and entrepreneurial exploration, suggesting that AI in Nigeria is being adopted as a practical productivity tool rather than merely as a novelty.

At the same time, adoption remains structurally uneven. Nigeria had an estimated 107 million internet users in early 2025, equal to 45.4% of the population, which provides a very large potential market for AI. But household and survey evidence shows that everyday digital access is far lower outside urban, better-connected, and better-educated segments. The National Bureau of Statistics reports that only about 21% of individuals aged 10 and above had internet access in its household survey frame, and access is much stronger in urban areas than rural areas. This means AI adoption in Nigeria is real and growing fast, but it is not yet broad-based across the full population.

Across platforms, the strongest evidence suggests that ChatGPT currently has the broadest mainstream footprint in Nigeria, Gemini has meaningful and growing traction, and Claude is present but likely narrower in reach. However, no dependable public source currently provides validated Nigeria-specific absolute user totals for these three platforms individually. For that reason, this report compares them using official availability data, large survey evidence, app-ranking proxies, and company disclosures, while clearly distinguishing between validated facts and directional indicators.

The strongest demographic conclusion is that AI use in Nigeria is led by younger, urban, educated, and connected users, while women, rural residents, lower-income households, persons with disabilities, and many northern populations face significantly greater barriers. Regionally, the evidence points to stronger AI-readiness conditions in the South—especially the South South and South West—and weaker conditions in the North West.

1. Methodology and Source Reliability

This report uses a source hierarchy designed to maximize reliability. The strongest sources are official Nigerian statistical and regulatory bodies, official company documentation, large named surveys with transparent methodology, and reputable institutional research. The principal sources used here are the Nigerian Communications Commission, the National Bureau of Statistics, NITDA/NCAIR, Google/Ipsos, Afrobarometer, GSMA, Oxford Insights, CSEA, and Anthropic. NCC

A major limitation is that public country-level statistics for individual AI assistants are still weak. No official or independently validated Nigeria-specific counts were found for the number of ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude users individually. That means any attempt to present exact user totals or exact platform-specific population shares would create false precision. In this report, such gaps are handled explicitly: where a figure is not publicly validated, it is marked as such rather than estimated without defensible basis.

The Google/Ipsos survey is particularly important to this report, but it should be interpreted correctly. It is a survey of online adults, not a direct census of the Nigerian population. Approximately 1,000 Nigerian adults were interviewed online, and responses were weighted by gender, age, region, and education. This makes it highly useful for understanding AI adoption among connected adults, but less suitable for deriving exact population-wide headcounts.

2. Nigeria’s Digital Base for AI Adoption

Nigeria’s digital scale is already large enough to support meaningful AI diffusion. DataReportal estimates that in early 2025 Nigeria had a population of 235 million, about 150 million active mobile connections, 107 million internet users, and 38.7 million social media user identities. These headline figures indicate one of the largest digitally connected populations in Africa, making Nigeria a natural candidate for rapid adoption of cloud-based AI assistants.

Yet national digital scale should not be mistaken for universal access. The General Household Survey for 2023/24 paints a more restrictive everyday-access picture: around two in ten individuals aged 10+ reported internet access, while roughly two-thirds reported access to a mobile phone. Internet access was much more common in urban areas than rural ones, and smartphone ownership was substantially higher in urban households. The practical implication is that Nigeria has a very large AI-capable population, but also a very large digitally excluded population.

Device quality and affordability remain major constraints. GSMA reports that 94% of men and 91% of women in Nigeria own a mobile phone, but smartphone ownership falls to 50% for men and 39% for women. Mobile internet adoption is 52% for men versus 35% for women, and affordability—especially handset affordability—remains one of the most important barriers. Because modern AI assistants are mainly accessed through smartphones and data connections, these constraints directly shape who can participate in Nigeria’s AI economy.

3. Current State of AI Adoption in Nigeria

The strongest public evidence suggests that AI adoption among connected Nigerians is already high. In the Google/Ipsos “Our Life With AI” topline results, 88% of Nigerian respondents said they had used an AI tool or application in the last 12 months, and 84% said they had used generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. Both figures are well above the global averages reported in the same survey. This suggests that once Nigerians are online and digitally engaged, AI use has become relatively mainstream.

The enterprise side shows a similar pattern of momentum. CSEA’s study of 528 digitally enabled firms across Lagos, Rivers, and Abuja found that 74.1% reported using AI in operations. Among those firms, 40.4% reported high-intensity daily use and 49.1% reported moderate use. This does not represent all Nigerian firms, since the sample deliberately focused on digitally enabled businesses, but it does show that AI adoption in Nigeria is increasingly operational and not limited to isolated experimentation.

Nigeria’s policy environment also supports the interpretation that the country has moved beyond mere curiosity about AI. The National AI Strategy adopted through NCAIR frames AI as a strategic national opportunity linked to development, skills, governance, and innovation. Oxford Insights likewise notes that Nigeria formalized its AI strategy in 2024, improving the institutional basis for future adoption.

4. Platform Comparison: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude in Nigeria

The table below integrates the best available evidence on the three major generative AI assistants most relevant to this report. Because platform-specific Nigeria user totals are not publicly validated, the comparison combines high-confidence facts with clearly labeled directional indicators.

Table 1. Comparison of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude in Nigeria

Source note: This table combines official availability data from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic; app-ranking signals from Similarweb; category-level survey evidence from Google/Ipsos; and contextual usage/geography evidence from Anthropic.

The most defensible reading of the table is that ChatGPT currently leads in Nigerian mainstream reach, Gemini has significant and likely growing adoption, and Claude is available and visible but less broadly adopted. What cannot yet be claimed responsibly is an exact user total or exact population share for any of the three platforms individually.

5. What Nigerians Use AI For

The evidence suggests that Nigerians use AI in a highly practical way. In the Google/Ipsos survey, 93% of Nigerian respondents reported using AI to learn something new or understand complex topics, 91% used AI to assist with work, 86% used it for learning or schoolwork, and 80% used it to explore starting a business, making more money, or changing careers. This combination of educational, work-related, and entrepreneurial use is one of the clearest patterns in the Nigerian AI story.

Nigerian respondents also reported strong use of AI for saving time, improving task quality, helping with communications, finding the right words, and generating images, video, or audio. This indicates that adoption is broadening beyond simple question-answering toward everyday assistant functions such as drafting, editing, summarizing, brainstorming, and content generation.

On the enterprise side, CSEA finds that AI is most commonly used in operations management and analysis/insights. In services, it also supports customer relations and product management; in industry, planning and strategy are key; and in agriculture, AI is used for production optimization. Increased efficiency is the most frequently reported benefit, followed by better decision-making and improved innovation capacity.

Table 2. Main reported AI uses in Nigeria

Source: Ipsos

6. Demographic Differences in AI Adoption Potential

The clearest divides in Nigeria are urban-rural, education-related, and income-linked, rather than just simple male-female differences. Afrobarometer’s Nigeria survey summary shows that personal mobile phone ownership is much higher in urban areas than in rural ones, and daily internet use is also substantially higher in urban Nigeria. In practical terms, urban Nigerians are much more likely to have the access conditions needed for frequent AI use.

Gender gaps remain meaningful once one looks past basic phone ownership. Afrobarometer reports that men are more likely than women to have mobile internet access and to use the internet daily. GSMA likewise reports lower smartphone ownership and lower mobile internet use among women. This suggests that the biggest gender gap in Nigerian AI adoption is not in whether people have any phone at all, but whether they have a smartphone, affordable data, digital confidence, and a sufficiently regular internet habit to support AI use.

Age is another strong factor. Afrobarometer’s wider Africa evidence shows younger adults use digital media and the internet much more than older adults, and the NCC digital-skills baseline shows youth have higher digital literacy than women and persons with disabilities. This strongly implies that Nigeria’s AI take-up is being led by students, early-career professionals, and digitally active younger adults.

Education and poverty are likely the deepest structural divides. Afrobarometer’s cross-country evidence shows that higher education is the strongest predictor of frequent internet use, followed by poverty status and urban-rural location. Nigeria’s household and digital-skills evidence fits that same pattern closely. This means that unless inclusion improves, AI could deepen existing inequalities by delivering the greatest gains to already advantaged groups.

7. Regional and Zonal Differences

Direct platform-by-platform AI usage counts by zone are not yet publicly available. The strongest zonal comparison must therefore be built from internet access, mobile access, and digital skills. On internet access, the General Household Survey identifies the South South as the strongest of the cited zones, with 42.2% of males and 39.5% of females aged 10+ reporting internet access, while the North West is the weakest at 13.9% and 13.6% respectively. These figures are strong evidence that AI-readiness conditions differ sharply across Nigeria.

On mobile access, the South West performs especially strongly. The household survey reports mobile phone access around 76.5% for males and 76.8% for females there, while the North Central is lowest among the cited zones at just over 56% for both sexes. Since smartphones are the main access point to AI for most Nigerians, strong phone access in the South West likely supports heavier everyday AI use there.

The NCC digital-skills baseline reinforces a broader North-South divide. It reports higher digital literacy in the South than in the North and especially large deficits among women and rural populations in the North. The Northwest, in particular, stands out as highly constrained, including very low computer literacy among female youth. This strongly suggests that regional inequality in AI adoption will track broader inequality in digital capability.

Table 3. Best-supported reading of zonal AI-readiness conditions

Sources: Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics NCC

8. Enterprise Adoption and the Policy Environment

Nigeria’s enterprise AI story is strongest in digitally enabled firms. CSEA’s survey finds that 74.1% of such firms use AI, with operations management and analysis/insights as the most common applications. Firms report increased efficiency, better decisions, and improved innovation as the main benefits. This suggests that the economic role of AI in Nigeria is already moving from experimentation toward integration, especially in business environments where digital tools were already established.

The main business barriers remain financial and organizational. CSEA identifies implementation cost as the top barrier, followed by unclear return on investment, alongside infrastructure and skills constraints. This is consistent with many emerging markets, where adoption can accelerate quickly at user level while deeper organizational embedding remains slower and more uneven.

On the institutional side, Nigeria has strengthened its AI policy foundations. The National AI Strategy sets out ambitions around governance, infrastructure, ecosystem development, adoption, and ethics. Oxford Insights records Nigeria’s 2024 Government AI Readiness total score at 43.33, with the country strongest in government readiness and weaker in technology-sector depth. The implication is that Nigeria has moved forward on strategy and institutional intent, but still faces major capacity gaps in infrastructure, ecosystem depth, and broad talent deployment.

9. Constraints on Broader AI Adoption

The largest barrier to broader AI adoption in Nigeria is still access. Smartphone ownership, internet-enabled devices, and affordable data are not yet universal, and they are distributed unequally across gender, region, income, and settlement type. Until these gaps narrow, AI adoption will remain faster in already connected segments than in the country as a whole.

The second major constraint is digital skills. The NCC baseline shows that foundational digital capability remains uneven by gender, youth status, disability status, and region. AI adoption depends on more than connectivity alone: users need enough digital literacy to search, compare, upload, evaluate, and trust online outputs. Where those basics are weak, AI uptake will lag even if technical access improves.

A third constraint is trust, cost, and institutional maturity inside firms. Even where individuals are already using AI, businesses face more complex questions: cost of deployment, integration with existing systems, data governance, privacy, and uncertain returns. That is why consumer-style adoption can look fast while enterprise transformation remains slower and more selective.

10. Conclusion

The strongest available evidence shows that AI adoption in Nigeria is already significant and economically meaningful, especially among connected adults. Nigerians are not using AI only for entertainment; they are using it for learning, work, writing, communication, and entrepreneurial exploration. In that sense, Nigeria is one of the most practically engaged AI markets in Africa.

But this is still an uneven story. The benefits of AI are concentrated among younger, urban, educated, connected, and more digitally skilled populations. The South generally has stronger AI-enabling conditions than the North, and women and rural residents continue to face systematic disadvantages in smartphone access, internet access, and high-intensity digital use.

Across platforms, the most defensible conclusion is that ChatGPT currently leads in Nigeria’s mainstream AI market, Gemini is growing and benefits from Google’s ecosystem and educational push, and Claude remains a meaningful but narrower player. However, exact Nigeria-specific user totals for these platforms cannot yet be stated with confidence from dependable public data. A factual report is stronger when it makes that limitation explicit rather than pretending otherwise.

The strategic implication is clear: Nigeria has a real opportunity to become one of Africa’s leading AI-using economies, but that outcome will depend on whether the country can widen access, lower device and data barriers, deepen digital skills, and prevent AI adoption from simply mirroring existing inequalities.

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