Nigeria ranks 18th out of 54 African countries in AI talent readiness, with a score of 37.7, according to a PwC report.
According to the Strategy& Mid-Year Economic Outlook for H2 2025, this places Africa’s fourth-largest economy behind South Africa (52.1), Tunisia (51.8), and Kenya (49.7), highlighting the country’s lag in advanced skills training, digital infrastructure, and a unified AI strategy.
Despite this, Nigeria is emerging as a continental hub for AI innovation, the report said.
“The country accounts for nearly 19 percent of organisations working on AI solutions in Africa, ranking second only to South Africa. With more than 2,400 organisations across the continent focused on AI, Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem is demonstrating resilience and potential.”
“Nigeria has the talent and the entrepreneurial drive, but without coordinated investments in AI education, infrastructure, and regulation, the country risks being left behind,” the report noted.
In Africa, AI technologies are expected to transform up to 40 percent of business use cases by 2027, creating trillion-dollar opportunities.
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For Nigeria, the stakes are high: adopting AI at scale could boost productivity in finance, agriculture, healthcare, and governance, while failure to prepare could deepen unemployment and inequality as automation reshapes labor markets.
According to a report by BusinessDay, approximately 85-90 percent of African countries lack comprehensive AI strategies. Over one billion people live in nations with no coherent approach to AI development. Current advancements concentrate in just four countries (South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana), which attract 83 percent of continental AI startup funding.
For most Africans, the report said. “AI remains as distant today as it was a decade ago. Organisations’ project AI could contribute $1.2 trillion to Africa’s GDP by 2030, but this optimistic forecast assumes adoption levels that current evidence cannot support. More critically, it assumes AI systems will eventually serve African needs – an assumption the data contradicts.”
