Following significant improvement in means of communication and enhancement in financial inclusion space, the World Bank has affirmed that 84 per cent of adults in low-and middle-income economies, including Nigeria, own personal mobile phones.
The bank in its Global Findex 2025 report said mobile phone ownership was widespread and nearly everywhere. It said data from the Global Findex 2025 Digital Connectivity Tracker, revealed that “86 per cent of adults worldwide, and 84 per cent of adults in low- and middle-income economies, own personal mobile phones.”
The report pointed out that mobile phones and the internet had become widespread and essential to daily life in every economy around the world.
A earlier overview had indicated that Nigeria had a high mobile phone penetration rate, with estimates around 85 per cent to 87 per cent in 2024.
This translates to over 200 million mobile connections, making Nigeria a leading market in Africa for mobile phone ownership and usage. While the overall penetration is high, there’s a growing trend towards smartphone adoption, with forecasts predicting over 140 million smartphone users by 2025.
According to DataReporter, a total of 150 million cellular mobile connections were active in Nigeria in early 2025, with this figure equivalent to 64.0 per cent of the total population.
However, note that some of these connections may only include services such as voice and SMS, and some may notinclude access to the internet.
There were 107 million individuals using the internet in Nigeria at the start of 2025, when online penetration stood at 45.4 percent. Nigeria was home to 38.7 million social media user identiities in January 2025, equating to 16.4 percent of the total population.
These headline stats offer a great overview of the “state of digital” in Nigeria at the start of 2025, but in order to make sense of how digital trends and behaviours have been evolving over time, we need to dig deeper into the data.
According to the World Bank, “as of 2024, individual ownership of mobile phones reached 86 per cent of adults worldwide.
“For many people, barely an hour goes by without their using a mobile device to make a call, ext a friend, read the news, access business information, post a meme on social media, pay for something, play a game, engage with a colleague or a customer, or search for information.
“As access to and use of digitally connected technologies increase, people, businesses, and governments place an increasingly high priority on online interactions. “Digitally connected technologies have clear, well-documented benefits.”
It further highlighted that access to mobile phones and the internet was associated with reduced poverty, increased consumption, and more employment for individuals in lowand middle-income economies.
“Women also experience these benefits, as internet access enables access to flexible jobs3 and has been shown to increase female labor force participation. “Mobile phones also facilitate information sharing.
For instance, in agricultural contexts, farmers’ access to real-time prices and buyer demand data can inform their decisions on where to sell, enhancing market efficiency and reducing the distances they would otherwise travel to get the best return for their product and time.
“Internet access also helps create jobs and aids individuals and countries in exporting goods and services,” it added. The World Bank further noted that owning a mobile phone furthermore enabled financial access through mobile money and other mobile financial services.
It added that these financial accounts and services, typically offered by mobile network operators or fintech firms and accessed via networks of local agents, were associated with lower rates of poverty, increased consumption and savings,and greater resilience to economic shocks.
