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NIGERIA’S UNTAPPED ENGINE FOR DEVELOPMENT
It’s time to fix the geospatial data gap,
argues RIDWAN SORUNKE
In the quest for sustainable development, Nigeria faces a silent but systemic barrier: the chronic underdevelopment of its geospatial data infrastructure. It is a challenge that receives little public attention but has far-reaching consequences—undermining our ability to make smart, evidence-based decisions in health, agriculture, infrastructure, and economic planning.
A recent assessment by Dev-Afrique Development Advisors confirms what many development actors already suspect: Nigeria’s geospatial ecosystem is not only fragmented and under-coordinated, but profoundly unfit to serve the scale and complexity of the country’s development ambitions.
Geospatial data refers to information that is tied to a location. It is the backbone of modern planning and delivery. Whether mapping unserved communities for health interventions, identifying viable farmland, or planning urban infrastructure, spatial data enables targeted, cost-effective, and inclusive decision-making.
Countries like Rwanda, Kenya, and India have demonstrated the catalytic potential of geospatial data. With the right systems in place, these nations have strengthened disaster preparedness, optimized public services, and attracted private investment through better data-driven planning.
Nigeria risks falling further behind.
To be clear, Nigeria is not starting from scratch. Several agencies—NASRDA, OSGOF, the National Population Commission, and the National Bureau of Statistics—are active in geospatial work. Initiatives such as GRID3, eHealth Africa, and the Data Scientists Network (DSN) have developed valuable datasets and use cases across health, urban mapping, and climate vulnerability.
Yet, the ecosystem remains disjointed. Agencies operate in silos, using inconsistent methods, storing data on separate platforms, and often refusing to share. According to our assessment, data accessibility often depends on internal bureaucracy or even personal discretion. There is no national repository. In some cases, valuable datasets are stored on personal laptops or USB drives—one technical failure away from being lost forever.
This lack of coordination not only leads to duplication of effort but deprives planners and policymakers of a comprehensive, real-time understanding of Nigeria’s development needs.
The health sector illustrates what’s possible—and what’s lost. Between 2012 and 2020, Nigeria’s polio eradication campaign used geospatial data to identify previously unmapped settlements and plan immunization routes. This precision was instrumental in achieving polio-free status. But today, few of these tools are institutionalized. Many states lack even basic mapping capacity, and health planners continue to work without up-to-date spatial data.
Agriculture, which employs a third of Nigeria’s workforce and contributes nearly a quarter of GDP, is similarly constrained. Most farming decisions are made using outdated, generalized data. There’s a glaring lack of high-resolution information on soil health, water resources, and cropping patterns. Without these insights, climate-smart agriculture and food security will remain out of reach.
Dev-Afrique’s study breaks the ecosystem into three critical pillars: generation, analysis, and operationalization. Each is leaking value.
· Data generation is project-based and unstandardized. Agencies use different formats, and funding is often ad hoc. While some open platforms exist, many datasets remain locked or underused.
· Analysis suffers from underinvestment. Proprietary tools are expensive, and few institutions are trained in open-source alternatives or advanced analytics like AI. As a result, even when data is collected, it’s rarely turned into insight.
· Operationalization—putting data to work—is the weakest link. Many successful pilot projects remain donor-driven and disconnected from national strategies. There is no formal system for scaling proven tools or sharing lessons across sectors.
Perhaps most troubling is the shortage of trained personnel at all levels of government. In many states, even basic map reading is a challenge. The few skilled professionals available are often lost to better-paying opportunities in NGOs or the private sector. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s educational programs have not kept pace with modern geospatial needs, creating a widening talent gap.
This capacity shortfall reinforces the cycle of underuse and underinvestment. Without capacity, demand remains low. Without demand, justification for systemic investment remains weak.
What Nigeria Must Do Now
Solving this problem is not a luxury—it is a necessity. Five urgent actions can help reverse course: Legislate the NGDI Bill: Nigeria must pass the long-pending National Geospatial Data Infrastructure (NGDI) Bill. It will establish the legal framework for standardization, governance, and data sharing.
Assign a Lead Agency: The government must appoint a coordinating body with a clear mandate to unify the ecosystem and eliminate duplication. At the moment, there is duplication of roles amongst government agencies like NASRDA and OSGOF.
Create a Central Data Repository: The proposed NGDI portal can serve as a national warehouse—open, interoperable, and regularly updated. It must be prioritized.
Invest in Skills and Technology: Training at the federal and subnational levels must be modernized and scaled. Embracing open-source tools and cloud infrastructure will expand access and lower barriers.
Align Donor Investments: Development partners must work within a national framework to avoid duplication and ensure long-term sustainability.
Geospatial data may not dominate headlines—but it determines everything from who gets a clinic to where the next climate disaster will hit hardest. It is the invisible infrastructure of smart governance.
Nigeria cannot afford to fly blind. If we are to meet the complex challenges of today and tomorrow—from epidemics to economic planning—then fixing the geospatial data pipeline must be treated as a top national priority.
It’s time to connect the dots—literally and strategically.
Sorunke is Principal of Dev-Afrique Development Advisors, a strategy and advisory firm supporting governments, private sector actors, and nonprofits across Africa in driving data-informed development outcomes
Letter
THE RETURN OF NIGERIA’S PSEUDO-SAVIOURS
For the average Nigerian politician, to be out of power is to be jobless, if not absolutely useless. The amount of worthlessness being out of power evokes in Nigerian politicians explains why they would do anything to hold on to political power or at least maintain some relevance.
To remain relevant, they usually do anything and everything.
As the treacherous transience of power hastens the twilight of their time in office, they take measures to stay put. They sacrifice their political parties, allies, public funds, and everything else just to hang on. Often, they don’t care who goes down or what is irreparably broken to, as long as they perpetuate themselves in power.
Between 1976 and 1979, Olusegun Obasanjo served as Nigeria’s military president. He had come in through a military coup. He was ruthlessly disposed by a military coup but stuck around until the Abacha military junta swept him to prison in 1995.
Having been released in 1998 as Nigeria sought the painful transition into a democracy, fortune and perhaps fate swept Obasanjo to the dizzying heights of Aso Rock in 1999. He clung on through two disputed elections to become president until 2007.
Having moved from prison to the presidency and having been in a vantage position of being able to compare the chills of being locked out of power to the comfort of strutting the corridors of power, Obasanjo did all he could to foster his now infamous third term agenda. His failure was a vital victory for Nigeria’s nascent democracy.
Nigerian politics is as cut-throat as they come. Triumphal and gloating, to be out of office is to face all manner of humiliation. For those who have tasted political power, it is as close to death as it comes.
It is what appears to currently afflict some politicians in Nigeria, who have become especially and uncharacteristically vocal about the perceived demise of the country. Of this lot, Nasir el-Rufai, Rotimi Amaechi and Abubakar Malami stand out.
It is a central tenet of political participation that a political person or a politician as the case should be able to form an opinion, agree or disagree as the case may be. This ability to agree or disagree is at the heart of voter power, which culminates in a vote. To cast a vote for one person is to agree with that person. But it is also to disagree with others.
So, Amaechi, El-Rufai and Malami have a right to disagree. But what they cannot and should not do is to attempt to sabotage the government, and there is a pattern.
For El-Rufai especially, it is déjà vu. Since the transience of political power swept him off his perch as Governor of Kaduna State in 2023, he took only a very short restless break but has since returned with vengeance and is eager to make up for lost time. He clearly does not think it is a major indictment on his part that many in Kaduna State, where he was governor for eight years are dizzy with relief that he is no longer governor and that his successor is putting in an excellent shift as governor.
El-Rufai has since returned to the role he played in the country between 2007 and 2015. In that time, after enjoying heavy influence under Olusegun Obasanjo between 2003 and 2007, he quickly found himself on the fringes in 2007. His response was to begin a venomous and vitriolic campaign against the administration of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and later that of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. He even spent some time on self-imposed exile painting the country and government black abroad.
His campaign of calumny against the then government of president Goodluck Jonathan abruptly ended when he became governor, only to put in a disastrous performance in eight years.
Now, freshly rested and recovered from the shock of being excluded from President Tinubu’s ministerial cabinet in 2023, El-Rufai has taken to taking potshots at the president and the government while rallying Nigerians to oust the government in 2027. Nigerians will do well to ignore him.
To achieve this, he has recruited the equally disgruntled Abubakar Malami, who was Attorney-General of the Federation, Rotimi Amaechi, who was minister of transportation and a handful of others. Their poor strategy of predicting doom and gloom for the country under the current administration rests disproportionately on the fact that the common bone they have to pick with the current administration is that they have been left in the cold after years of wielding political power which they failed to use for the good of Nigerians.
Kene Obiezu,
