Nigerian businesses that fail to overhaul their operations with digital technologies risk losing relevance as the country’s economy becomes increasingly driven by data, technology and digitally enabled services, Stanley Jacob, president of the Fintech Association of Nigeria, has warned.
Jacob, who is also group chief innovation and technology officer at Meristem Securities, said the divide between digitally native companies and traditional enterprises was no longer simply a technology gap but a “survival gap.”
Speaking at the maiden 2026 Business Innovation Series of the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce in Lagos, Jacob said digitisation had become the minimum requirement for businesses seeking to remain competitive in an economy with more than 200 million people, half of whom are under 30.
“Digitisation is the minimum requirement for relevance,” Jacob said in his presentation titled “Digitizing Business: Building Scalable, Future-Ready Enterprises.”
Nigeria’s digital market is estimated at $14 billion in 2026 and is growing at about 18 percent annually, with the market projected to reach $31 billion by 2031, according to figures presented by Jacob.
The digital economy contributed more than N7 trillion to gross domestic product in the first half of 2025, accounting for more than 14 percent of total output, while N600 trillion was routed through Nigeria’s payment infrastructure in 2024, he said.
But despite the expanding digital economy, many businesses are failing to extract meaningful value from their technology investments.
Jacob said 70–80 percent of digital transformation initiatives do not achieve their stated objectives, while fewer than one in three African firms that adopt digital technologies make intensive use of them.
He attributed much of the failure to companies treating digital transformation as an information technology project rather than a business strategy.
“Transformation must be led by business strategy, owned by the CEO and CFO, not delegated to IT,” Jacob said.
He also identified digital skills shortages and literacy gaps as major barriers to adoption, citing research across 144 Nigerian SMEs which found that skills shortages and digital literacy gaps, rather than cost, were the biggest obstacles.
Businesses, he said, must also establish stronger governance around their digital investments, including architecture standards, data governance and portfolio discipline, to prevent fragmented technology spending.
AI will amplify weak foundations
Jacob urged companies adopting artificial intelligence to first fix their data, processes and governance, warning that AI could magnify existing weaknesses rather than automatically solve them.
“Deploying AI without clean data is like building a house on sand,” he said.
He said businesses could deploy AI in three broad areas: augmenting existing processes, automating high-volume repetitive tasks and creating new products and business models.
The key, however, was ensuring that businesses had clean data, sound processes and skilled people before scaling AI adoption.
Nigeria’s fintech sector illustrates the speed at which digital businesses can scale, Jacob said.
The sector attracted more than $2 billion in investment in 2024, while five Nigerian startups had a combined valuation of $6 billion, according to his presentation.
The expansion of Nigerian fintech companies into the UK, including LemFi, Moniepoint and Kuda, alongside Wise’s entry into Nigeria, also points to an increasingly integrated UK-Nigeria digital corridor, he said.
Jacob said sustaining this momentum would require greater regulatory clarity, infrastructure investment and talent development.
He cited Nigeria’s Payment Systems Vision and Open Banking framework as positive steps, while pointing to investments in data centres and programmes targeting digital skills in artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing and user experience as important to building the ecosystem.
The warning comes as businesses across sectors face growing pressure to use technology not just to cut costs but to improve customer experience, make faster decisions and develop new revenue streams.
In his welcome address, Akin Osuntoki, deputy president of the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce, said technology was no longer simply a tool for improving efficiency but had become a strategic driver of growth, competitiveness and long-term sustainability.
Osuntoki said businesses needed to embrace digital transformation, innovation and data-driven solutions to remain resilient and capture emerging opportunities, adding that the chamber’s innovation series was intended to connect businesses, innovators and investors and turn partnerships into investment and sustainable economic growth.
Jacob challenged business leaders to determine whether their digital strategies were reviewed quarterly, explicitly funded and championed by senior management, while also assessing their customer experience, data and cybersecurity systems independently.
“The enterprises that define the next decade will not be the largest, they will be the most adaptive, data-driven, and customer-obsessed,” Jacob said.
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