Nigeria’s public sector sits on the cusp of its most dramatic upgrade since the mobile-phone boom. The draft National Artificial Intelligence Strategy released last year (now launched) projects the domestic AI market will exceed US $430 million by 2026, expanding at 44 percent a year. Yet uptake is uneven, and the basic leverage like connectivity, data, and talent still lags. Average fixed-broadband speeds are barely one-third of the global mean, ranking Nigeria 140th worldwide. Against that backdrop, in this piece I look at four sectors that illustrate both the promise and the pitfalls of an AI-powered public service.
Agriculture: from guesswork to climate-smart farming
Smallholder farms produce about 80 percent of Nigeria’s food, but yields are volatile. AI tools might already be closing that gap. Crop2Cash’s “Farm Advice” app sends hyper-local, machine-generated planting tips to feature-phones, and its CashCard platform builds a digital credit history for rural growers. Pairing satellite imagery with on-farm sensors can push that further, leading to predicting pest outbreaks, optimising fertiliser use, and unlocking parametric insurance that pays out automatically when drought hits.
But there are challenges: patchy 4G/5G in rural states, limited open-data on soils and weather, and a financing bias that still funnels more capital to fintech than agritech. Without deliberate public investment in rural broadband and shared data standards, AI risks widening, and not shrinking the productivity gap.
Health: clinical capacity on a silicon budget
Nigeria counts barely four doctors per 10,000 people, far below the WHO benchmark. Digital health firm Helium Health is using natural-language processing to clean up electronic medical records and an AI triage bot (“HeliumDoc”) that screens young people for TB, HIV, and diabetes in minutes. Have you tried them? Computer-vision algorithms can also read chest X-rays where radiologists are scarce, while predictive models can flag counterfeit drugs moving through supply chains.
Challenges: sensitive patient data sit on fragmented, often unsecured systems; cyber-attacks on health records are rising; and there is no dedicated regulatory sandbox for AI-based diagnostics. The draft National AI Strategy calls for both a National Health Data Exchange and a strengthened ethics commission, but timelines remain vague.
Education: personal tutors in every pocket
COVID-19 exposed enormous learning deficits, but it also normalised digital classrooms. Ed-tech company uLesson now layers an AI “homework help” agent and adaptive quizzes onto low-bandwidth mobile apps, tailoring revision plans to each child’s pace. A recent study by the World Bank shows the promising impact of generative AI amongst secondary school students in Edo state. Similar recommendation engines could guide students through Nigeria’s new skills-for-work curricula; speech-recognition models in local languages could support early-grade reading.
Challenges: Only half of public-school teachers have basic digital literacy; devices remain expensive for the poorest quintile; and the curriculum authority is still drafting guidelines for AI-generated content. Absent teacher training and safeguards against algorithmic bias, personalised learning could entrench, not erase urban-rural inequalities.
Public administration: better decisions, faster
Routine tasks from processing pensions to spotting procurement fraud always consume scarce civil-service hours. Language models fine-tuned on legal text can draft memos or translate complex policy into Nigeria’s major languages; anomaly-detection algorithms can flag suspicious contract payments in real time . The Ministry of Communications’ AI Research Grant Scheme as far back as 2023 funds prototypes in digital governance, and NITDA’s director-general argues that “strategic collaborations will transform Africa’s future” in this space.
Challenges: Government data remain siloed, and many agencies still keep paper records. Freedom-of-information rules, if poorly enforced, can also limit the training data needed for accountable public-sector AI. Finally, trust is thin: citizens will accept algorithmic decisions only if explanations are clear and appeal processes simple.
What must happen next?
Wire the last mile. Extending fibre and 4G/5G to farming clusters and secondary schools is the single cheapest way to unlock private AI investment.
Open the data taps securely. Sector regulators should publish anonymised datasets (yields, claims, health outcomes) under fair-use licences while enforcing Nigeria’s 2023 Data Protection Act.
Skill up the workforce. The 3 Million Technical Talent programme can fast-track an AI-ready civil-service cadre if paired with in-service fellowships, not just entry-level coding bootcamps.
Create an agile rulebook. A light-touch sandbox for crop-risk models, diagnostic AI, and ed-tech engines would let innovators test under supervision before nationwide scale.
If done right, AI can turn bandwidth and data into bumper harvests, healthier communities, and classrooms that adapt to every learner. Done poorly, it will add another layer of opacity to an already fragile public sector. The National AI Strategy shows Abuja understands the stakes; the next administration budget will reveal whether it is ready to pay the down-payment on a smarter state. What do you think?
