Lagos has solidified its status as Africa’s leading tech and innovation hub, with government officials and industry stakeholders emphasizing the city’s role in enhancing Nigeria’s digital transformation and global competitiveness.
At the GITEX Nigeria Tech Expo and Future Economy Conference 2025, Minister of Communications, Innovation & Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, affirmed that Lagos is “Africa’s unequivocal center of innovation and culture,” adding that the city receives over 2000 new residents per day and has the highest concentration of tech founders on the continent. He shared that Lagos is home to at least five unicorns, including Flutterwave, Opay, Interswitch, Andela, and Jumia – where Lagos has now been identified as the fastest-growing tech city in the world.
Dr. Tijani stated that Lagos is the intersection of culture and technology. “Lagos is where code meets culture,” he said. “It’s not just about startups. It’s about Nollywood. About Afrobeats, which are now filling stadiums from London to New York. They are shaping the world’s cultural future. With our creative economy alone expected to contribute over 15 billion dollars to the GDP in the upcoming years.”
The Minister stated Nigeria’s ICT sector has grown from less than five percent of GDP ten years ago to between 16 and 18 percent currently, with a goal of 21 percent by 2027. He indicated that companies related to technology are now the dominant companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, ahead of Oil, presumably signalling that the digital economy is now surpassing the traditional economy.
He added that projects such as Project Bridge, a 90,000-kiliometre fibre backbone created in support of the needs to connect every Nigerian from farmers and traders to students and innovators, and the 3MTT programme, the largest digital skills training program in the world, are aimed at getting all Nigerians connected to technology. He also mentioned having over 55 academic research projects being funded, with up to 75 more planned for funding this year, along with local companies using artificial intelligence via platforms such as AI Collective to build global solutions.
On Lagos’s rise as a tech hub, Director-General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Kashifu Inuwa said it was fuelled by Nigeria’s cashless policy in 2012, which ‘forced’ banks to digitise in response and created an environment for fintech to flourish. He noted, Fintech is still Nigeria’s rocket fuel but other opportunities are opening within agriculture, healthcare, education and security. Inuwa noted, “The other countries have infrastructure to fuel innovation, whereas we have no choice but to fuel our innovation with resilience, because we need to create solutions.”
From 2019 and to 2024 to the present Lagos attracted over 6 billion dollars in foreign tech investment, meaning over 70 percent of total foreign inflows into Nigeria. Lagos has 23 of Nigeria’s 28 fastest growing companies and still appears to be attractive on the global stage but has many challenges including issues around infrastructure, the slowdown of funding and the propensity of tech talent to emigrate. To fill those gaps, investors are supporting things such as a new 72,000-square-metre tech park that aims to introduce up-to-date facilities for supporting innovation
Despite the challenges, Lagos remains the continent’s innovation engine. Government stakeholders and ecosystem actors are confident that Lagos will not only continue to build on the momentum already established, but will also bring Africa along with it in order to gain and secure its place in the global digital economy. As Dr. Tijani concluded, “We are not building for elites, we are building for every Nigerian. Our focus is to ensure every community can foster innovation using technology, with many to means no community is left behind”.