Nigeria has set a target of one million export-linked outsourcing jobs by 2030 under the Hire From Nigeria campaign, launched in Abuja in late August 2026 and presented at the United Nations General Assembly in September. The initiative, promoted by the office of the Vice President and the trade minister Jumoke Oduwole, aims to grow the sector from an estimated current base of 20,000 workers, representing a 50-fold increase in four years.
The country faces significant competition from established players across Africa. Egypt employed 195,300 people in exporting outsourcing firms as of June 2026, with exports of 5.2 billion dollars in the last financial year, according to the chief executive of its IT industry agency. Morocco had 148,500 offshoring jobs in 2024 and is targeting 270,000 by 2030. Ghana, with roughly one-fifteenth of Nigeria's population, currently has about 20,000 jobs and has set a target of 100,000. South Africa, which runs Africa's best-organised business services industry, created 26,346 jobs serving international markets in 2025, its strongest year since 2018. However, South Africa's industry body now expects the sector to add about 150,000 jobs by 2030, down from 500,000 envisaged in a national master plan agreed in 2021, representing a two-thirds downward revision.
Automation poses a significant challenge to Nigeria's recruitment strategy. Research by Caribou and Genesis Analytics with the Mastercard Foundation, published in April 2025, found that close to 40 per cent of tasks in the outsourcing sector could be automated by 2030. Entry-level roles, which make up 68 per cent of the sector's workforce, are particularly vulnerable, with more than half of entry-level tasks automatable. Customer experience work, accounting for 44 per cent of employment, has about half its tasks exposed to automation. Tasks performed by women are on average 10 per cent more susceptible to automation than those performed by men because women are concentrated in junior roles.
Nigeria's institutional foundations remain incomplete. The National Artificial Intelligence Strategy was published in September 2025 with 34 strategies, but independent analysis found that none carried a binding key performance indicator. As of March 2026, the proposed independent AI Governance Regulatory Body had not been constituted, and the accompanying code of practice had not been finalised. Nigeria spends about 0.2 per cent of GDP on research and development, against a global average above two per cent. Ghana, by contrast, launched its National AI Strategy in April 2026 with cabinet approval for 250 million dollars for a national AI compute centre and commitment to establish a Responsible AI Authority within a year.
Nigeria's compute infrastructure remains limited. Published counts of operational data centres range from 11 to 25, with capacity estimates between roughly 30 and 86 megawatts. The African Data Centres Association put the whole of Africa at 360 megawatts of active capacity in early 2026. Recent developments include Kasi Cloud's commissioning of a hyperscale-ready, AI-capable campus in Lagos in May 2026, MTN's opening of a 150-million-dollar facility in Ikeja, and Airtel's Eko Atlantic data centre taking delivery of its first GPUs. In August, MTN confirmed a partnership with a UAE-backed platform targeting 150 megawatts of AI-ready capacity across Nigeria and South Africa. A critical constraint remains electricity supply, with Nigeria averaging around 4,200 megawatts available in April 2026 against over 13,000 megawatts of installed capacity.
For workers and businesses in Nigeria, this means the promised outsourcing jobs may face disruption from automation in entry-level roles and customer service positions while essential infrastructure to support the sector remains incomplete.