By Muhammad Sal
Nigeria’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector grew significantly in the first quarter of 2025, showing strong momentum for the country’s economy.
The sector saw a 31.63% year-on-year growth in nominal terms during this period, according to a recent report from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) . This is a big jump compared to the 3.40% growth recorded in the same quarter of 2024 . The ICT sector’s share of the total nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) also increased to 10.29% in Q1 2025, up from 9.25% in Q1 2024 .
Even when adjusted for inflation, the sector showed a 7.40% year-on-year growth . This stressed the growing importance of ICT in Nigeria’s economy, with its contribution to real GDP reaching 10.59% in Q1 2025 .
The NBS defines the ICT sector to include areas like telecommunications, information services, publishing, and broadcasting . Within this, telecommunications remains a key contributor due to more people using broadband, consuming data, and having mobile subscriptions .
This growth comes after the NBS updated how it calculates the GDP, using 2019 as the new base year . This led to higher GDP figures for Nigeria from 2019 onwards . For instance, the rebased nominal GDP in 2019 was 41.7% higher than figures calculated with the old base year.
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