By Daniel Oluwatobiloba Popoola
The Federal Government will commence implementation of its 90,000-kilometre nationwide fibre-optic network project in October, the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, has disclosed, noting that funding for the project had already been secured.
Tijani made this known on Thursday, 20 August, 2026 in Abuja at the National Innovation Hub Standards Framework Workshop, organised to validate proposed standards, assessment criteria and the implementation approach for innovation hubs across the country.
He explained that President Bola Tinubu had approved the deepening of connectivity across the country through the investment in 90,000 kilometres of fibre optic network, adding that by the time the project is completed, it would become either the second or third longest fibre optic network on the African continent, ranking between what obtains in South Africa and Egypt.
The Minister’s disclosure provided a more specific commencement date for Project BRIDGE, an acronym for Building Resilient Digital Infrastructure for Growth, which the government had previously scheduled to begin implementation in the fourth quarter of 2026.
According to him, the project is designed to deploy at least 90,000km of additional fibre across Nigeria through a public-private partnership, a development that would extend the country’s fibre backbone from about 35,000km to roughly 125,000km.
Tijani disclosed that funding for the project had been assembled from multiple development partners, noting that the World Bank had approved $500m in financing in October 2025, while the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development subsequently committed $100m alongside a €22m grant from the European Union.
He added that 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 stated that expanding fibre infrastructure formed 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.
He explained that the government’s strategy covers three layers, beginning with infrastructure such as fibre, power, telecom towers, satellites and data centres, followed by digital platforms including identity and payment systems, while the third layer comprises innovators and businesses that build services on the infrastructure.
Beyond fibre deployment, Tijani said the government planned to install close to 3,700 telecom towers in communities currently without network coverage, disclosing that over 20 million Nigerians currently live in communities without access to telecommunications services.
He further disclosed that Nigeria’s communications satellite would also be renewed to extend connectivity to areas where towers and terrestrial infrastructure could not easily reach.
The Minister 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.
He noted that a bigger economy would translate into more jobs, more captured taxes, and more resources for the delivery of services to citizens, stressing that achieving this required creating more companies like Andela, Paystack and Flutterwave, which he said would brighten the future of the Nigerian economy.
Earlier at the event, 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 across the country.
He disclosed that research had identified more than 339 hubs nationwide, but noted that they remained heavily concentrated in Lagos, Abuja and a few other states, stressing the need to standardise operations across the country so that entrepreneurs would not need to relocate from one region to another to grow their businesses.
Abdullahi 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. He also disclosed that 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.
Also speaking, 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, disclosing that 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.
She added that the framework could become part of the broader digital architecture being supported by the EU and its partners, noting that scale without a common standard remained fragile.
Representing Denmark’s Consul General to Nigeria, Jette Bjerrum, the 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, stressing that successful implementation would require continued cooperation among the government, private sector, development partners, entrepreneurs and hub operators.
