Nigeria faces significant challenges in achieving widespread digital inclusion, despite the best efforts of the national government and the private sector. Urban areas, particularly in the southern regions like Lagos, have relatively advanced digital infrastructure, while rural and semi-urban areas lag significantly. According to Research ICT Africa, only 19% of Nigerians living in rural areas have internet access, meaning at least 82 million rural Nigerians do not currently use the internet. This digital divide is driven on the demand side by the high costs of smartphones, data plans, and digital services. The supply side is affected by inadequate internet coverage, limited digital literacy, insufficient policy support, inadequate infrastructure, and significant gender disparities.
Community-centred connectivity initiatives offer a range of services from basic internet connectivity to transformational services like e-learning, often provided for free or on a cost-recovery basis. They have evolved significantly over the past few decades, driven by both grassroots initiatives and institutional efforts, such as the Fantsuam Foundation and Internet Society Nigeria. Despite facing sustainability challenges, these early initiatives laid the groundwork for current efforts. Recent initiatives by organisations such as Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), Media Awareness and Justice Initiative (MAJI) and Hello World show promise, indicating a growing momentum towards achieving widespread connectivity. They are fledgling operations in Nigeria, with estimates suggesting about 13 initiatives. However, there may be additional networks that are either undeclared or unknown to stakeholders.
The Nigerian School of Community Networks (NSCN) stands as the most significant and sustained capacity building effort in Nigeria’s Community-Centered Connectivity Initiatives (CCCI) ecosystem. Run by CITAD, a non-governmental, non-profit organisation founded in 1996, with offices in Abuja, Kano, and Bauchi, the NSCN brought together rural community members, local organisations, and practitioners to learn how to create, manage, and own community networks as an alternative to bridging Nigeria’s access gaps.
The first edition launched in December 2021 in Kaduna, the first school of its kind in Nigeria bringing together members of seven rural communities for five days of training on building, managing, and sustaining community networks. A second edition followed in Kano in August 2022, delivered in both English and Hausa to reflect the linguistic reality of northern Nigeria. By 2026, the school was preparing for its sixth iteration, due in October 2026. The first three editions (2021–2023) were funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Since 2024, the school has been self-sponsored a significant indicator of institutional commitment and sustainability. The school has also moved from training to deployment. In March 2023, CITAD trained community members and deployed its first community network in the Hafanafri community of Jama’are Local Government Area, Bauchi State. The community network committee was trained in resource mobilisation, technical operations, and advocacy.
Yet even with this record of achievement, the NSCN faces the structural limitations that define Nigeria’s CCCI capacity building landscape as a whole: all six editions have been held in the North (Kaduna and Kano); the South-West, South-East, South-South, and North-Central have had no equivalent training; and the school, by its own design, reaches a small number of practitioners relative to the scale of Nigeria’s connectivity challenge. The NSCN is a vital foundation but a national capacity building strategy must build on it, not duplicate it.
In August 2024, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Rhizomatica under the Local Networks (LocNet) initiative set up the National Advisory Committee on Community Networks in Nigeria to guide the development of a comprehensive National Strategy for Meaningful Community-Centred Connectivity to enhance digital inclusion and connectivity in Nigeria, particularly in underserved rural areas, with the support of the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland acting through the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
The National Strategy proposed the development of comprehensive training programs on all aspects of CCC to build local expertise. Providing training and capacity-building programs for local operators is essential for encouraging community-led initiatives. Equipping residents with the skills and knowledge needed to manage and maintain community networks, fostering self-reliance and long-term sustainability.
Bootcamp objectives
General
To strengthen Nigeria’s emerging community-centred connectivity ecosystem through practical training, peer exchange, movement building, and collaborative processes that contribute to shaping future national capacity building efforts.
Specific
- To build and strengthen the practical capacities of existing and emerging CCCIs in Nigeria.
- To foster stronger relationships, collaboration, and knowledge exchange among community connectivity practitioners, civil society organisations, technical actors, and other ecosystem stakeholders across Nigeria.
- To strengthen participants’ understanding of Nigeria’s emerging regulatory and licensing environment for CCCIs, and opportunities for engagement in regulatory and policy processes.
- To create collective spaces for ecosystem diagnosis, reflection, and strategic exchange on the future of community-centred connectivity in Nigeria, including the role of CCCIs in addressing broader territorial priorities such as climate resilience, environmental monitoring, local communication systems, education, and locally relevant digital services.
- To generate collective inputs, recommendations, and possible working structures that can contribute to the development of future national capacity building and ecosystem support efforts for CCCIs in Nigeria, grounded in practitioner experience and community realities.
Expected outputs
- Strengthened practitioner skills and knowledge across key areas of community-centred connectivity, including technical, governance, financial sustainability, policy, and locally relevant digital services, grounded in Nigerian practice and immediately applicable.
- Practical outputs developed during the bootcamp, including shared tools, references, case studies, and resources emerging from the different thematic tracks and working sessions.
- Stronger relationships, peer exchange, and collaboration between community connectivity practitioners and ecosystem actors across Nigeria.
- A shared diagnosis of key challenges, opportunities, and capacity building priorities for CCCIs in Nigeria.
- Initial next steps, possible working groups, and areas for continued collaboration and peer learning identified collectively by participants during the bootcamp.
Proposed scope
The bootcamp runs for five days. It is structured as a learning and exchange experience.
- Day one: Scenario Building - A shared 'Diagnosis Wall' captures the real picture of CCCI and Capacity building and stays on the wall for all five days as a reality check on everything that follows
- Day two to four: Foundational Training - Three days of comprehensive training covering all core dimensions of CCCI work. The sessions build the conceptual foundation, move into practice, case studies, and application to Nigerian contexts.
Day five: Site Visit and Mapping Way Forward - Site visit to Dakwa Community Network, grounding the learning in lived reality. A collective reflection space where participants draw on everything they have learned and seen to surface priorities, explore next steps, and shape the structure using participatory methodology in addressing the CB needs going forward.
