Nigeria’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector recorded a strong 31.63% year-on-year growth in nominal terms in the first quarter of 2025, according to the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
This marks a sharp rise from the 3.40% growth posted in Q1 2024, making ICT the fastest-growing sector in the economy for the period.
The sector’s contribution to nominal GDP climbed to 10.29%, up from 9.25% in the same quarter last year and 8.55% in Q4 2024.
In real terms (adjusted for inflation), ICT grew 7.40% year-on-year, reflecting a 3.36 percentage point improvement over Q1 2024. Its real contribution to GDP also rose to 10.59%, further cementing its role in Nigeria’s economic landscape.
The NBS attributed the sector’s impressive performance to a surge in telecommunications services, higher broadband penetration, and increased consumption of digital content and online platforms.
Defined broadly, the ICT sector includes telecommunications, information services, publishing, broadcasting, motion pictures, sound recording, and music production. Among these, telecoms remain the primary growth driver.
Despite a quarter-on-quarter decline of -8.86% in real growth—due to typical post-holiday reductions in digital activity—the sector’s year-on-year trajectory remains strongly positive.
This data reflects Nigeria’s newly rebased GDP, which now uses 2019 as the base year, replacing the previous 2010 benchmark. As a result of this rebasing, previous GDP figures have been revised upward, with 2024’s nominal GDP now showing a 35.4% increase over earlier estimates.
