Nigeria

Summary
Nigeria exhibits a high degree of digital dependence and is the second-most digitally dependent African country in our dataset. While its DDI value indicates a slight decrease between 2010 (0.96) and 2023 (0.90), dependence continues to be extremely high across almost every dimension. Nigeria’s highest levels of dependence can be found in the reliance on foreign ICT patents (average 1.00 since 2010), as well as in its dependence on the trade of ICT goods with values close to 1.00 in every year since 2010. However, Nigeria substantially decreased its dependence on trade in ICT services from 0.89 in 2010 to 0.73 in 2023.

Policies
While our research did not bring up a large variety of dependence-related policies between 2020 and 2026, Nigeria did initiate one highly relevant framework: The 2025 "National Sovereign Cloud Initiative" intends to secure Nigeria’s digital data sovereignty by shielding critical public systems from cyber threats and reducing the country's reliance on foreign cloud providers.