Nigeria is pushing artificial intelligence into its education and wider digital-economy plans, but the country faces a basic challenge: many schools still need stronger digital infrastructure, reliable electricity, suitable devices and teachers with the skills to use AI effectively.
The National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, released by the Federal Government on September 19, 2025, identified education as an important area for AI adoption. The strategy also acknowledged that Nigeria’s education infrastructure was not yet sufficiently developed for widespread AI education, citing gaps in technology and the availability of trained educators.
The infrastructure challenge was also recognised in Nigeria’s National EdTech Strategy 2025–2030, launched in 2025 by the Federal Ministry of Education. The strategy identifies electricity, internet connectivity, devices and teacher digital competence as important foundations for digital education and sets out a framework for expanding technology-enabled learning.
The problem extends beyond classrooms. In its assessment published on July 21, 2026, the International Monetary Fund said sub-Saharan Africa faces major constraints to AI adoption, including unreliable electricity, limited digital infrastructure and shortages of digital skills. The IMF said improving electricity, internet access and skills would be critical to allowing the region to benefit from AI.
For Nigerian schools, that means access to AI software alone will not solve the problem. A school without dependable power, internet connectivity or suitable devices cannot make consistent use of AI-powered learning tools.
Teacher preparation is another major issue. On November 20, 2025, UNESCO highlighted the Naija Teacher AI initiative, which is designed to provide Nigerian teachers with AI-powered tools and digital training. UNESCO said the programme aims to reach 1.5 million licensed Nigerian teachers, with national scale-up planned through 2026. The initiative is being implemented with the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria and GMind AI.
Nigeria has also been expanding AI and robotics training in secondary education. The National Senior Secondary Education Commission says that, as part of its robotics and artificial intelligence programme, 6,000 teachers had been trained by 2025 through a partnership involving Google, while robotics clubs and innovation laboratories were being developed in schools.
Evidence from outside Nigeria shows why teacher preparation matters. In a report published on July 16, 2025, the Sutton Trust found that private-school teachers in England were more than twice as likely as state-school teachers to have received formal AI training, 45% compared with 21%. Private schools were also three times as likely to have a clear school-wide AI strategy, at 27% compared with 9%. The findings were based on a Teacher Tapp survey of more than 10,000 teachers.
UNESCO’s September 4, 2025 report on AI and education similarly warned that rapid digitalisation can worsen existing inequalities if access, safeguards and rights are not properly addressed.
For Nigeria, the issue is therefore bigger than whether schools adopt ChatGPT-style tools or other AI systems. The real question is whether pupils in poorly resourced public schools can access the same technological opportunities as those in better-funded institutions.
That requires investment in the less glamorous parts of the AI revolution: electricity, broadband, affordable data, devices and teacher training.
Nigeria’s AI ambitions are expanding, but unless the foundations of digital education improve alongside them, artificial intelligence could end up adding a new layer to an old problem, the country’s digital divide.
