Nigerian Businesses Lead in AI Adoption as Zoho Customers’ Growth Reach 75%

Emma Okonji

Zoho, a global technology company, recently released a new research report, which revealed that Nigerian businesses are setting a global standard in balancing Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption with robust privacy protection.

The study titled: ‘The AI Privacy Equation: The Nigerian Model of Responsible AI Adoption’, was conducted by Arion Research on behalf of Zoho.

The company also said it saw a customer growth of 75 per cent in 2024 in Nigeria, one of its key markets in the African region.

Zoho made the two key announcements on the sidelines of Zoholics Nigeria, the company’s annual user conference, which held recently in Lagos. 

Speaking at a press conference, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria, Mr. Kehinde Ogundare, said: “We continue to invest in Nigeria as businesses here accelerate their adoption of technology to grow and scale. The latest study around AI and Privacy proves that Nigerian businesses are leading the way in responsible AI adoption, as they temper the new technology with privacy measures. This mirrors Zoho’s philosophy of building contextual and privacy-first AI models that can help businesses realise tangible benefits. We infuse our AI solutions—from conversational and prescriptive to agentic and generative—with business context so that it can provide organisations with decision intelligence.”

The report, which surveyed 386 respondents in Nigeria, reveals that 93 per cent of Nigerian organisations have already begun their AI journey, with 31 per cent achieving advanced AI integration across the organisation, and 26.5 per cent implementing AI across multiple departments. This indicates that more than half of Nigerian businesses have moved from an experimental phase to operational deployment of AI.   

Furthermore, 84 per cent of the respondents report strengthening privacy measures since implementing AI, with 66 per cent describing these improvements as significant, the report said.

According to the report, the widespread adoption is being driven by executive commitment at the highest levels, as more than half of the respondents occupy CEO or executive roles, and this leadership-driven approach is accelerating adoption and moving companies quickly from pilots to full-scale deployment.  

The study found that Nigerian businesses are not just adopting AI, they are embedding it responsibly.

The report further said 94 per cent of organisations now have a dedicated privacy officer or team, a figure well above global averages. “In fact, 40 per cent of the organisations allocate more than 30 per cent of their IT budgets specifically to privacy protection, reflecting the belief that strong governance is a competitive advantage rather than constraint,” the report further said.

The financial sector, according to the report, is pioneering the balance between innovation and compliance, representing 29 per cent of the respondents. Their top AI use cases for them include customer service automation (49 per cent), software development and enhancement (46 per cent), and marketing optimisation (32 per cent), each implemented with privacy-by-design principles at the core.  

Addressing AI upskilling and barriers, the report said while the lack of technical expertise was cited as the top-most barrier by 37 per cent of the businesses, privacy and security concerns were the next biggest challenge, cited by 35 per cent of the respondents, adding that skills development is, therefore, a defining feature of the Nigerian model, with 69 per cent of organisations prioritising data analysis and interpretation skills, 53 per cent emphasising on AI literacy, and 40 per cent of organisations investing in prompt engineering skills for generative AI tools. The report noted that Nigerian organisations recognised that AI success depends more on human capability development than technology acquisition.