NDEPS Progress in Nigeria: Where We Stand on Digital Economy Targets
In 2019, Nigeria launched the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) with targets that were, by any measure, ambitious. 70% broadband penetration by 2025. Five million Nigerians trained in digital skills. Government services fully available online. A legislative framework supporting tech startups.
We are now in 2026. The deadline has passed. So where do we actually stand?
This article assesses NDEPS progress in Nigeria based on measurable outcomes, honest data, and a clear-eyed look at what has worked and what has not. If you need a grounding in what the eight pillars are and why they were created, that is covered separately in our NDEPS pillars guide.
The NDEPS Targets: What Nigeria Committed to by 2025
Before assessing progress, it helps to be clear on what was actually promised. The NDEPS set out commitments across five broad areas.
| Area | Target |
|---|---|
| Broadband | 70% penetration nationwide; 25 Mbps minimum in urban areas; 10 Mbps in rural areas |
| Digital Skills | Train 5 million Nigerians; establish innovation hubs in all 36 states |
| Digital Government | 100% of government services available digitally; unified digital identity via NIN |
| Startup Ecosystem | Legislative framework for startups; dedicated funding mechanisms |
| Emerging Technology | AI and blockchain integration across sectors; local content development |
These were not aspirational gestures. They were specific, time-bound commitments with measurable endpoints. Holding the framework to that standard is the only honest way to assess it.
Progress Report: Where Nigeria Stands in 2026
Broadband and Infrastructure
Target: 70% broadband penetration nationwide by 2025.
State of Play
According to NCC data, Nigeria’s broadband penetration reached approximately 52% by December 2025, leaving a gap of roughly 18 percentage points against the 70% target. The trajectory was not linear: penetration declined for two consecutive months mid-year before recovering through the second half. At the current growth rate, 70% is more likely to arrive in 2028 or 2029 than anywhere near the original deadline.
The 2Africa submarine cable landing in Lagos expanded international bandwidth capacity. 5G networks are live in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and several other cities. InfraCo’s fibre rollout has extended backbone infrastructure to previously underserved states.
The constraint is not backbone capacity. It is last-mile access. Having fibre in a state does not mean citizens or businesses can connect to it. States in the north, including Taraba, Yobe, and Zamfara, remain well below 20% penetration. Right-of-Way fees vary widely by state, making infrastructure deployment expensive and unpredictable for ISPs trying to expand beyond the major urban centres.
What This Means for Business
The broadband gap is a product design constraint as much as an infrastructure problem. Businesses building digital products for a national audience cannot assume consistent connectivity outside Lagos and Abuja. Cloud-first architecture, offline functionality, and low-bandwidth design are not optional considerations for products targeting secondary cities. They are baseline requirements.
For businesses already operating in well-connected urban centres, the infrastructure progress since 2022 has made cloud migration and remote operations genuinely viable. That window is worth acting on.
Digital Skills
Target: Train 5 million Nigerians in digital skills by 2025; establish hubs in all 36 states.
State of Play
Progress on this pillar is real but unmeasurable. No centralised tracking system exists to count how many Nigerians have actually completed training programmes under NDEPS. Programmes like Data Science Nigeria, NITDA’s iHatch, Google’s AI Fund, and Microsoft’s 4Afrika initiative are running across multiple states and producing graduates. But a two-day workshop and a six-month intensive programme count the same way in the absence of standardised metrics.
Most credible training programmes are based in Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt. Hubs have not been established in all 36 states as committed. The 5 million target is almost certainly not met, but without reliable data, the honest answer is that nobody knows.
What This Means for Business
The skills gap is narrowing, but unevenly. For businesses recruiting developers, designers, and data professionals, the Lagos talent pool is deeper than it was five years ago. For businesses outside the major cities, or trying to build teams in secondary markets, the shortage remains acute.
The more immediate risk for most businesses is not finding skilled hires. It is deploying new technology without investing equally in the people expected to use it. Skills development and technology adoption need to run in parallel; treating them as sequential is where most digital transformation efforts stall. Organisations that cannot wait for a government dashboard need to build that capability internally or partner with training providers directly.
Digital Government Services
Target: 100% of government services available digitally by 2025.
State of Play
Federal-level digitisation has progressed but remains partial. The services.gov.ng portal provides online access to passport renewal, visa applications, and a range of tax services. NIN enrolment has reached over 100 million Nigerians. Some states, notably Lagos and Kaduna, have digitised land registry and tax payment systems.
The aggregate picture is far less encouraging. Federal services are roughly a quarter to a third digitised. State-level progress varies widely, most local government areas have no digital service infrastructure at all, and many services that are technically available online still require an in-person step. Integration between agencies remains poor: NIN does not automatically work across all government platforms despite being the intended backbone of digital identity.
The 100% target is not close.
What This Means for Business
The services that are fully digitised deliver real-time savings: company registration through the CAC portal, FIRS online tax filing, and customs documentation through Nigeria Customs Service platforms are all worth using. Businesses that still default to manual processing for these are absorbing unnecessary costs.
The longer-term story is structural. As government digitisation deepens, digital services will become an integration layer that private sector products connect to for identity verification, compliance processing, and data exchange. Developers and businesses building relationships with government technology units now will be better positioned to compete for those integrations when they open up.
Startup Ecosystem
Target: Supportive legislative framework and dedicated funding mechanisms.
State of Play
On legislation, Nigeria has delivered. The Nigeria Startup Act, passed in 2022, provides a legal framework for startup support, tax incentives, and regulatory clarity. Moniepoint’s unicorn status in 2024 illustrates what the ecosystem can produce when policy, talent, and capital align.
The implementation gap is real, however. Based on the most recent verified data, only around 12 states had indicated interest in or initiated domestication of the Startup Act, and no centralised tracking of further progress has been published since. Most of the country therefore operates without the state-level support structures the Act was designed to create. Venture funding contracted sharply in 2023 and 2024 as global capital tightened. The bulk of venture activity still concentrates in Lagos, leaving founders in Enugu, Kano, Ibadan, and Port Harcourt with limited access to capital regardless of the quality of their businesses.
What This Means for Business
The legislative target has been met. The funding and implementation targets have not. For founders outside Lagos, accessing capital still largely requires a Lagos presence, whether through incorporation or investor relationships. That geography is unlikely to change quickly even as secondary hubs grow.
For established businesses, the sustained government backing of digital business models is a signal worth reading carefully. E-commerce, digital marketing, and online service delivery are no longer purely commercial choices; they now align with national policy direction. The regulatory and infrastructure investment will continue to follow.
Cybersecurity and Data Protection
Target: A functional cybersecurity framework and meaningful data protection compliance.
State of Play
The regulatory foundation is solid. The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 replaced the earlier NDPR and gave the Nigeria Data Protection Commission stronger enforcement powers. NIN-SIM linkage improved identity verification and reduced fraud in telecommunications. Major companies in banking, telecoms, and technology broadly comply.
The enforcement gap is where the framework breaks down. Most SMEs remain non-compliant with NDPA requirements, largely because of awareness shortfalls rather than deliberate avoidance. Data breaches continue to occur with limited public disclosure or accountability. Nigeria has also not joined the Budapest Convention on cybercrime, which constrains its ability to cooperate internationally on cross-border cyber threats.
What This Means for Business
The gap between large-company compliance and SME non-compliance is a positioning opportunity most smaller businesses are ignoring. In sectors where data handling is a purchasing criterion, including financial services, healthcare, and HR technology, strong data protection practices build customer trust that competitors cannot replicate quickly. Companies treating compliance as a one-time project are the ones most exposed when enforcement tightens.
Emerging Technologies
Target: AI, blockchain, and emerging technology integration across sectors.
State of Play
Nigeria’s emerging technology story is one of genuine innovation constrained by structural limits. On AI, FundusAI is diagnosing diabetic eye disease using machine learning and is now used internationally. Farmspeak is applying AI to agricultural advisory. These are not accelerator demo projects; they are Nigerian-built solutions operating in real markets.
On blockchain, Nigeria ranks among the highest globally for crypto adoption, driven by practical use cases in remittances, inflation hedging, and cross-border payments. This is real economic necessity, not speculative enthusiasm.
The constraint is scale. Most emerging tech deployments remain in early-stage or pilot mode. Infrastructure gaps limit deployment outside major cities. Regulatory uncertainty, particularly around digital assets, has historically created hesitation among investors that slows the transition from pilot to production.
What This Means for Business
The practical question for any business engaging this pillar is where to act now and where to wait. AI-assisted operations are ready to deploy today without enterprise budgets or specialist teams: back-office automation, customer service chatbots, and accessible data analytics tools are all within reach. Blockchain, by contrast, remains high-risk for most Nigerian businesses until the regulatory position stabilises. Treating all emerging technology as a single category leads to either overinvestment in the wrong areas or blanket avoidance of genuinely useful tools.
Local Content and Indigenous Innovation
Target: Prioritise Nigerian technology solutions in government procurement.
State of Play
Executive Orders 003 and 005 directed federal agencies to prioritise local content in technology procurement. Some states, including Enugu, have implemented digital programmes that use locally developed solutions. Nigerian software companies are winning more government contracts than in previous years.
Enforcement remains the gap. Many government agencies continue to default to international vendors for major technology projects. The definition of “local content” is vague enough to allow structuring arrangements that technically comply while keeping the substantive work with international firms. No clear verification mechanism exists.
What This Means for Business
Nigerian technology companies pursuing government contracts need to treat procurement compliance as a strategic competency, not just a checkbox. Understanding the process, maintaining the right certifications, and forming the right partnerships are the differentiators that convert policy intent into actual contract wins.
For international vendors, the enforcement trend is worth watching. The precedents set in states like Enugu suggest that local content requirements will tighten over time, moving from a negotiating point to a threshold requirement. Building genuine local partnerships now rather than structuring minimum compliance is a more durable commercial strategy.
NDEPS Progress: The Overall Scorecard
| Pillar | Target | Current Status | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broadband and Infrastructure | 70% penetration | ~52% by December 2025 (NCC data) | Behind target |
| Digital Skills | 5 million trained | Unknown; no centralised tracking | Incomplete data |
| Digital Government | 100% services online | 25β35% at federal level | Behind target |
| Startup Ecosystem | Framework and funding | Framework passed; funding contracted | Mixed |
| Cybersecurity and Data Protection | Functional framework | Regulations strong; enforcement weak | Mixed |
| Emerging Technologies | Sector-wide integration | Innovation real; scale limited | Mixed |
| Local Content | Government procurement prioritisation | Policy exists; enforcement inconsistent | Mixed |
Only one pillar, the legislative startup framework, can be called clearly achieved. Every other pillar is either behind target or structurally incomplete. Nigeria has proven it can create policy. It has not yet proven it can execute at the same pace.
Why Progress Has Been Slower Than Expected
Understanding why NDEPS targets have been missed matters more than cataloguing the fact that they were. Several structural factors have compounded across every pillar.
Infrastructure economics. Broadband deployment costs remain high due to inconsistent Right-of-Way fees across states, security challenges in certain regions, and dispersed rural populations that make last-mile connectivity commercially unattractive for private ISPs without subsidy or regulatory incentive.
Coordination failures. Federal policy does not automatically translate to state and local action. Many states lack either the capacity or the political will to execute NDEPS initiatives, and most of the implementation gap sits at state and local government level where accountability mechanisms are weakest.
Funding constraints. Both government budget pressures and the global technology funding contraction of 2023 and 2024 slowed private and public investment at a critical period. Infrastructure projects were delayed. Startups consolidated or shut down. Training programmes lost funding.
Regulatory uncertainty. Changing positions on fintech, crypto, and digital assets created hesitation among investors and entrepreneurs that proved costly. Capital sat on the sidelines waiting for clarity that arrived slowly.
Implementation discipline. Nigeria has consistently been stronger at launching frameworks than at sustaining the execution needed to deliver on them. Policies and programmes have been created faster than the institutional capacity to implement them has grown.
The pattern across all five factors points to the same root problem: Nigeria succeeded at policy creation and failed at coordinated execution. That is not a resources problem or a talent problem. It is a governance and accountability problem, and it is the one issue that no new policy announcement can solve on its own.
The Path Forward
Five years into NDEPS, the framework has accomplished more than its critics acknowledge and less than its architects promised. Infrastructure is expanding, though not fast enough. Policy foundations exist across every pillar, though enforcement is inconsistent. Innovation is real, but scale remains elusive.
The targets set in 2019 reflected a level of institutional coordination and sustained investment that has not materialised at the required pace. That is worth naming honestly rather than dressing up as “incomplete success.”
What it does not mean is that the framework has failed. NDEPS is still shaping where government investment goes, which regulatory burdens are becoming unavoidable, and which infrastructure gaps are being prioritised. Businesses that understand where each pillar stands are better placed to anticipate changes than those treating NDEPS as background policy noise.
The question is no longer whether Nigeria will build a digital economy. It is whether the pace of building will be fast enough to convert current momentum into genuine regional leadership before the window narrows. That answer will be determined not by the next policy announcement, but by what happens in implementation over the next three years.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Reading
- NDEPS Pillars in Nigeria: What They Mean for Your Business
- Digital Transformation in Nigeria: What’s Working and What’s Not
- The Future of IT Solutions in Nigeria
- Navigating the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023
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At PlanetWeb, we track Nigeria’s digital transformation journey and provide honest analysis of NDEPS progress, tech policy changes, and what they mean for businesses and startups.
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Updated March 2026
