The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has called on Nigerian businesses to urgently move from experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) to full-scale adoption, noting that the Nigerian AI market is projected to reach $430 million by the last quarter of the year. LCCI President, Leye Kupoluyi, made this statement yesterday while speaking at the LCCI AI Summit held at the Commerce House in Lagos. He emphasized that competitiveness will increasingly depend on how effectively firms deploy intelligent systems.
Summit Highlights and Key Takeaways
The event, organized by the LCCI ICT Group in collaboration with the Young Business Leaders Group (YBLG), brought together industry leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs to explore practical pathways for integrating AI into business operations within Nigeria's unique economic context. Kupoluyi, represented by his Deputy, Abimbola Olashore, stated that while Nigeria has one of the highest levels of engagement with AI globally, enterprise adoption remains limited, creating a gap that must be closed to unlock productivity and growth.
He noted that about 88 percent of Nigerian adults have interacted with AI tools, yet only a fraction of businesses have integrated the technology at scale. This signals a transition point for companies to move beyond experimentation to structured deployment across operations. Kupoluyi said the country's AI market is projected to exceed $430 million by 2026, driven by growth in fintech, logistics, and digital services. He stressed that AI is no longer peripheral but a core input in modern economic production.
Competitive Advantage Through AI
“Competitive advantage will increasingly depend on how effectively businesses deploy intelligent systems rather than on scale or capital alone. The question before us is no longer whether to adopt AI, but how quickly and effectively we can translate adoption into productivity and competitiveness,” Kupoluyi said. He added that AI is already delivering measurable results across sectors, including improved fraud detection in financial services, better demand forecasting in retail, enhanced yield decisions in agriculture, and optimized logistics operations, with some applications achieving up to 50 percent efficiency gains.
Chair of the LCCI ICT Group, Segun Okuneye, said the summit was designed to shift the conversation from global hype to practical implementation within Nigeria's business environment. “Adoption is not without its realities. We must contend with infrastructure gaps, data availability challenges, regulatory considerations, talent shortages, and the need for stronger digital trust frameworks,” he said. However, he noted that Nigerian firms are already applying AI in real-world scenarios, including fraud detection, customer insights, demand forecasting, and network optimization. The focus should now be on scaling these use cases sustainably.
Key Pillars for AI Adoption
Okuneye identified contextual innovation, capacity building, and collaborative ecosystems as key pillars for successful AI adoption, stressing that partnerships among government, private sector players, startups, and academia would be critical to driving impact. Also speaking, Co-founder of All-In Nigeria, Dotun Adeoye, warned businesses to pay close attention to governance and regulatory risks as AI adoption accelerates, noting that many organizations are already exposed through unregulated usage.
