FG to launch 90,000km fibre-optic network in October

The Federal Government is set to begin work on its 90,000-kilometre nationwide fibre-optic network project in October, the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, has announced.

Tijani said funding for the project had been secured, adding that it would play a major role in the government’s efforts to expand Nigeria’s broadband infrastructure and improve internet access in underserved communities.

The minister disclosed this on Thursday in Abuja while speaking at the National Innovation Hub Standards Framework Workshop.

The workshop, organised to validate proposed standards, assessment criteria and implementation plans for innovation hubs across the country, is part of efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s digital innovation ecosystem.

“President Bola Tinubu approved that we must deepen connectivity and we’re investing in 90,000 kilometres of fibre optic network.

“By the time we are done, it’s going to be either the third or second longest fibre optic network on the African continent, somewhere between what we have in South Africa and Egypt. And this is a project that is starting implementation in October. We have raised the funding for it,” Tijani said.

The October timeline provides a more specific commencement date for Project BRIDGE, or Building Resilient Digital Infrastructure for Growth, which the government had previously scheduled to begin implementation in the fourth quarter of 2026.

The project is designed to deploy at least 90,000km of additional fibre across Nigeria through a public-private partnership, extending the country’s fibre backbone from about 35,000km to roughly 125,000km.

Funding for the project has been assembled from multiple development partners.

The World Bank approved $500m in financing in October 2025, while the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development subsequently committed $100m alongside a €22m European Union grant. In April 2026, the African Development Bank approved another $200m for Nigeria’s Digital Value Chain Infrastructure for Boosting Employment project, which incorporates Project BRIDGE.

The minister said expanding fibre was part of a broader strategy to build the foundational infrastructure required for Nigeria’s digital economy, noting that technology had become critical to productivity in sectors ranging from agriculture to healthcare and education.

According to him, the government’s strategy covers three layers, beginning with infrastructure such as fibre, power, telecom towers, satellites and data centres.

The second covers digital platforms including identity and payment systems, while the third comprises innovators and businesses that build services on the infrastructure.

Beyond fibre, Tijani said the government planned to deploy close to 3,700 telecom towers to communities currently without network coverage.

“There are over 20 million of those people in this country today living in communities where there’s no access to telecommunications at all,” he said.

He added that Nigeria’s communications satellite would also be renewed to extend connectivity to areas where towers and terrestrial infrastructure could not easily reach.

Tijani linked the infrastructure investments to the government’s ambition to build a $1tn economy, arguing that Nigeria could not achieve the target by depending on oil and gas alone.

“The bigger our economy gets, the more jobs we create, the more taxes we’re able to capture, the more money we have available to deliver roles and services to our people,” he said.

“And that we cannot achieve just through oil and gas. If we can create more companies like Andela, like Paystack, like Flutterwave, the future of Nigeria is, of course, extremely bright.”

Earlier, the Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, Kashifu Abdullahi, said the proposed National Innovation Hub Standards Framework would address disparities in the quality and distribution of innovation hubs.

According to him, research identified more than 339 hubs nationwide, but they remain heavily concentrated in Lagos, Abuja and a few other states.

“We find it necessary to standardise across the country so that you don’t need to travel from Yola to Yaba for you to grow your business,” Abdullahi said.

He explained that the proposed framework contained seven dimensions and about 35 assessment criteria through which hubs could measure their strengths and develop towards becoming capable startup incubators.

Abdullahi also said NITDA was working with the education ministry to integrate digital skills into formal education, noting that weak alignment between academia and industry remained a major gap in Nigeria’s technology ecosystem.

The Acting Head of Partnerships at the Delegation of the European Union to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Prof. Leila Ben-Amor, said common standards were necessary to sustain the rapid expansion of Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem.

She said Team Europe and key member states were supporting Nigeria’s digital ecosystem with more than €820m between 2021 and 2027 through initiatives including the EU-Nigeria Digital Package and Global Gateway Strategy.

“Scale without a common standard is fragile,” Ben-Amor said, adding that the framework could become part of the broader digital architecture being supported by the EU and its partners.

Representing Denmark’s Consul General to Nigeria, Jette Bjerrum, Senior Programme Manager at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nigeria, Nosakhare Ayejimiwo, said a national benchmark would strengthen the quality and capacity of innovation hubs while helping governments and development partners better target their interventions.

She said successful implementation would require continued cooperation among the government, private sector, development partners, entrepreneurs and hub operators.

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