Digital Infrastructure Development and Economic Growth in Nigeria: The Role of Broadband Connectivity, Digital Identity, Data Centres, and Cybersecurity (2000-2025)

This paper examines the relationship between digital infrastructure development and economic growth in Nigeria over the period 2000 to 2025, disaggregating digital infrastructure into four components: broadband connectivity, digital identity infrastructure, data centre capacity, and cybersecurity preparedness. Because official, continuous time series do not exist for all four components over the full study period, the paper constructs empirically defensible proxies for digital identity infrastructure, data centre capacity, and cybersecurity preparedness, drawing on internationally recognised indicators and documented policy milestones. The study is grounded in an augmented Solow-Swan growth framework in which digital infrastructure is treated as a distinct form of capital that complements physical and human capital in the aggregate production function. Using annual secondary data compiled from the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics, the Nigerian Communications Commission, and the National Identity Management Commission, the study applies the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds-testing approach to cointegration, which is well suited to a moderate annual sample with variables of mixed order of integration. The bounds test confirms a long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables. The results show that broadband connectivity and digital identity infrastructure exert positive and statistically significant long-run effects on real GDP growth, data centre capacity shows a positive but comparatively smaller effect consistent with its still-early stage of development in Nigeria, and cybersecurity preparedness exerts a positive effect that strengthens after the enactment of Nigeria's cybercrime legislation. The error correction term is negative and significant, confirming convergence to long-run equilibrium. The paper concludes that digital infrastructure has become a measurable driver of economic growth in Nigeria, but that growth dividends are constrained by the underdevelopment of data centre capacity and by the historically recent nature of formal cybersecurity governance, and it offers policy recommendations accordingly.

Digital Infrastructure; Broadband Connectivity; Digital Identity; Data Centres; Cybersecurity; Economic Growth; Nigeria; ARDL

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