IMF Identifies Nigeria Among Top Five Sub-Saharan African Economies for AI Productivity Gains

Nigeria has been identified as one of the five Sub-Saharan African economies with the highest potential productivity gains from artificial intelligence, according to a new International Monetary Fund departmental paper.

The report, titled “Unlocking the Potential: AI in Sub-Saharan Africa” and prepared by an IMF team led by Martin Schindler, lists Nigeria alongside South Africa, Mauritius, Botswana and Namibia as the region’s top five economies expected to record the strongest AI-driven productivity gains under baseline projections (leadership.ng).

Nigeria’s position reflects its employment structure, with a relatively larger share of workers in sectors such as finance, information and communication technology and professional services, where AI is expected to deliver greater productivity improvements than in predominantly manual occupations (pmnewsnigeria.com). The paper notes that job composition in these countries more closely resembles patterns in emerging market economies than in much of the rest of the region.

The IMF estimates that AI adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa could increase productivity by between 0.2 percent and 2.1 percent over the next decade, potentially adding up to nearly half a percentage point to annual GDP growth. Under current conditions of low adoption, infrastructure gaps and sectoral structure, productivity gains are projected at only 0.2 percent cumulatively over 10 years—described by lead author Schindler as “little more than a rounding error.” With the right foundations to accelerate adoption, including electricity, broadband and digital skills, the gains could rise to about 4 percent of GDP over the decade (punchng.com; reuters.com).

Sub-Saharan Africa ranks lowest on the IMF’s AI Preparedness Index, with shortfalls in digital infrastructure, technical skills and regulatory capacity. Around half the region’s population lacks reliable electricity, and only 38 percent of Africans used the internet in 2024 compared with a global average of 68 percent (reuters.com). The paper stresses that the central concern is not technological disruption of jobs but whether countries can adopt, adapt and scale AI quickly enough to capture benefits and avoid falling further behind.

The Fund highlights existing AI applications in the region, including pilot chatbot tutoring programs in Nigeria that have delivered learning gains in mathematics, and digital agricultural advisory services in Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda and Uganda that can improve crop yields. Private investment is also rising, with deals such as a $700 million Cassava Technologies-NVIDIA partnership to deploy GPUs across South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco, and a $1 billion Microsoft-G42 data centre project in Kenya. Africa currently hosts about 160 data centres, roughly 5.5 percent of the global total, with nearly half concentrated in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya (thewhistler.ng).

The report concludes that AI presents a meaningful window of opportunity for Sub-Saharan Africa to accelerate growth, but policy choices on infrastructure, skills, governance and regional cooperation will determine whether it supports convergence or deepens divergence. An accompanying IMF blog based on the paper underscores that Africa does not need to build frontier AI models but must use the technology widely, cheaply and safely (imf.org).