Why AI adoption in Nigeria isn’t just a tech problem

“Africans, we don’t like breaking systems.”

This statement from Mayowa Olutuyo is direct and reveals a great deal. As a  Product Marketing and Partnership Manager at no-code AI infrastructure startup, Autogon, he has a clear view of the situation on the ground.

Most people blame slow AI adoption on factors such as poor internet connectivity, a shortage of skilled workers, or a lack of funding. 

While those issues are real, Olutuyo says they aren’t the main problem. The biggest roadblock is culture. It’s a deep dislike for the kind of messy, sweeping change that a technology as powerful as AI always brings.

Think of it as a cultural safety net. People naturally prefer things to stay the same, so they pull back from the radical change that AI represents. This isn’t a flaw, it’s just a reality that gets ignored. For Nigeria’s tech innovators, this means the hardest part of their job isn’t about code or computers. It’s about understanding how people behave.

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Olutayo’s observation reveals a core tenet of Nigeria’s business culture. 

“Improvements here are a function of ‘it doesn’t work’ as opposed to a function of ‘you need to keep on the trend,” he says over a call with Condia. “We are masters of reactive problem-solving. When something breaks, we fix it. But the proactive, often uncomfortable, process of dismantling a functioning system simply to build a better one runs against the grain. It feels unnecessary, risky, and disruptive.”

And AI is nothing if not disruptive.

This slowness to accept change makes other, more common problems worse. For example, the global fear of AI taking away jobs is a very big deal here.

It’s not just regular workers who are afraid. Even the managers whose job is to introduce new technology feel threatened. Olutayo has seen this happen firsthand. A company can spend money on a new AI tool, but if the employees who have to use it believe it will replace them, they will quietly find ways to make sure it fails.

“You know how African businesses can be,” he says.“The people you work with make processes frustrating for you. Even if you buy a solution, nobody will touch it.” 

This quiet form of resistance is a powerful way of saying “no.” In the end, the expensive new software just sits there, gathering digital dust—a reminder of a new idea that the people in the company were not ready for.

Olutuyo’s on-the-ground assessment that AI adoption is in a ‘spiral’ is reflected in global metrics. Nigeria ranked 94th out of 172 countries in Oxford’s 2024 AI Readiness Index, lagging due to challenges in infrastructure and governance.”

So, how do you get past it? How do you sell the future to a culture that instinctively guards the present?

How to sell AI in Nigeria

You find a problem so urgent and so costly that the risk of not changing becomes greater than the fear of change itself. In Nigeria, an example is fraud in the financial sector.

“The most promising signs [of adoption] are in finance,” Olutayo says. Unlike other sectors, large banks and financial institutions have both the capital to experiment and a clear, high-stakes incentive to do so. Fraud is a direct, quantifiable threat to their existence. For them, AI is not a luxury or a trend; it’s a strategic necessity. 

His focus on finance isn’t just a hunch; it’s where the money is. In 2024, the fintech sector accounted for a staggering 72% of Nigeria’s total venture capital funding, according to Partech. With over $1.6 trillion in mobile money transactions processed last year, the incentive for banks to invest in AI-powered fraud mitigation is not just strategic—it’s essential for survival.

“They have the liberty to adopt. They have a threshold to try and fail,” he adds. They are, in effect, breaching the firewall out of sheer desperation.

By building and adopting AI systems to mitigate fraud, the financial industry is creating a blueprint for the rest of the nation. But their success is the exception that proves the rule—it took a “bleeding-neck problem” to force the kind of change others are still resisting.

For companies that don’t feel an urgent need to change, Olutayo has a different strategy. He knows that using words like “AI” can set off alarm bells and make people resistant. So, he avoids the technical terms altogether.

He focuses on solving a specific problem for the business. In other words, he sells the solution, not the technology.

He describes his products by what they do. For example, he’ll say, “this tool will reduce your fraud losses,” or “this system helps you approve loans faster.”

This prevents people from putting their guard up, which the word ‘AI’ often makes them do. It’s a smart way to market, showing you understand the local mindset. It’s about speaking a language everyone gets: the language of results, not tech jargon.

This practical experience, however, reveals a major disconnect from the national strategy. While innovators are finding clever ways to get AI adopted, Olutayo argues the government is “working with a blindfold.”

He points out that the government can’t create helpful policies for AI if it isn’t aware of what’s being built. Nigeria has many talented people creating AI for everything from credit checks to stopping fraud. But without a government that understands this, its policies are made in the dark. Real support requires real information.

In the end, AI in Nigeria isn’t just a tech story. It’s a human story about the clash between the fear of change and the desire to innovate. The challenge won’t be solved by better technology, but by better understanding the people it is meant to serve.

And sometimes, that understanding requires confronting beliefs that predate the digital age entirely.

“At a cultural level, we need a mindset shift. We need to believe that this technology isn’t evil spirits. I’m not joking, I’ve seen people react that way—‘How do you talk to a machine and it responds?’”