The Nigerian telecommunications sector has emerged as one of the most consequential drivers of economic transformation over the past 25 years, with cumulative investment rising from about $500 million to more than $75 billion as mobile connectivity expanded from severe scarcity to mass adoption.
Bismarck Rewane, managing director, Financial Derivatives Company (FDC) and chairman, FCMB, said the transformation, accelerated by the entry of MTN Nigeria in 2001 and the liberalisation of the sector, has fundamentally altered how economic activities are conducted across the country.
Speaking on the evolution of the sector, Rewane recalled that Nigeria had only about 250,000 fixed telephone lines in 2000, when NITEL operated as a state-owned monopoly.
That situation has since changed, with the Nigerian Communications Commission’s 2026 Spectrum Roadmap reporting 177.4 million active mobile subscriptions and 144.8 million active internet subscriptions as of November 2025.
“That tells you the scale of the transformation that has taken place in the Nigerian economy,” Rewane said.
The growth in connectivity has also been reflected in Nigeria’s teledensity, which Rewane said increased from about 0.4 percent at the beginning of the period to almost 80 percent.
“We moved from a country where less than one per cent of the population had access to telecommunications to one where connectivity is now available to the overwhelming majority of Nigerians,” he said.
Beyond subscriber growth, Rewane identified the scale of capital deployed into telecommunications infrastructure as another indicator of the sector’s economic significance.
According to him, combined investment in telecommunications stood at roughly $500 million at the start of the transformation but has since exceeded $75 billion.
“That is not just money invested in telecommunications companies. That is investment in the Nigerian economy, investment in infrastructure and investment in the capacity of the economy to produce and transact,” he said.
The economist argued that the industry has moved beyond its traditional role of providing voice and data services to becoming an essential component of Nigeria’s economic infrastructure.
“MTN and the other telecom operators have evolved from providing telecommunication services into becoming critical economic infrastructure and catalysts of growth,” Rewane stated.
He noted that telecommunications now supports activities across banking, commerce, healthcare, transportation and education, among other sectors.
The expansion of digital financial services, e-commerce, remote communication, logistics coordination and access to online services has consequently made network availability increasingly important to the functioning of businesses and public services.
This interdependence, he argued, means that the sector’s economic contribution cannot be fully captured by its direct share of gross domestic product.
Rewane noted further that conventional measurements of telecommunications output could understate the sector’s broader contribution because they do not necessarily capture the economic activity enabled by connectivity.
“If you look only at the numbers, you may say telecommunications contributes a certain percentage to GDP. But if you look at the effective value, you begin to see the linkages,” he said.
“Take telecommunications away and the system does not simply lose that percentage. The system begins to grind to a halt,” he added.
