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  Many who live in Nigeria’s major cities now take internet access for granted. For them, it’s a fixed part of daily life, a tool for getting work done, staying informed, and being entertained. Yet, millions of people in this country have little or no connectivity. Such locations may benefit from community-funded internet access.
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In recent times, we’ve seen a few Nigerians install infrastructure that enables high-speed internet access for their communities of origin or neighbourhoods of residence. If more people did this on a broader scale, the benefits could be transformative for the country. Rural areas in particular could gain a lot from such initiatives. Here we’ll share some ways that socially-funded efforts to connect our rural and semi-urban areas to the world can raise their residents’ quality of life and material prosperity.

Create and Expand Local Businesses

People who live outside of the major urban centres are now more educated than ever. But many lack access to opportunities that will allow them to earn an income with their knowledge and skills. Meanwhile, the internet brims with these opportunities, on offer from every part of the world. Sufficiently educated people who dwell in our villages and lower-tier towns can create online businesses if they have a cheap and reliable internet connection. It could be freelance writing, web development, graphic design, digital marketing, or virtual assistance. Or it might be e-commerce outlets that enable local in-situ businesses to sell products to a much larger market. Possibilities abound.

Make Remote Work Possible

The idea of remote work has erased commuting distances and birthed truly global teams, even for smaller-scale businesses. If you’re a great software developer or copywriter who lives in a rural or semi-urban area with a reliable internet connection, you could work for companies in Nigeria’s main cities or elsewhere in the world, while still there. Even today, many remote workers in Nigeria have relocated from larger cities to quieter, less expensive locations that have a reasonably good internet connection. Think of what could be achieved if residents with means or non-resident indigenes across the country pooled resources to provide connectivity for their neighbourhoods or places of origin.
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Improve Education

The internet is a treasure trove of information. From YouTube to open courseware websites, the syllabi of the world’s top universities, ebooks and podcasts, and even platforms for preparatory tests, the resources available on the web are innumerable. And they are mostly free. If you and your community collaborators are determined to support education via access to the internet, you could do at least one of these two things:
  • Set up learning centres where internet access is limited to educational or informative content
  • Support schools with infrastructure that enables internet access
Ideally, you would want locals to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to become self-sufficient, either online or offline.

Strengthen Healthcare

There is currently a severe shortage of primary healthcare centres in Nigeria’s rural areas. In many Local Government Areas, healthcare facilities are so far away that people have to travel for hours to get to them. And where these facilities exist, they are often short of qualified staff. Reliable internet access will enable people in rural communities to consult far-off doctors virtually and be prescribed drugs by medical experts. This makes it possible to run leaner local healthcare centres, albeit with nurses and pharmacists still required.

Drive Smart Agriculture

Agriculture remains the backbone of Nigeria’s rural economy. Unfortunately, much of agricultural practice in the country is inefficient. Lack of information about weather, produce prices, storage practices, optimal approaches to cultivation, and electronic payment systems has led to poor output, waste, and the exploitation of farmers by middlemen. If farmers and local small-scale agri-business entrepreneurs can get the kind of information listed above on time and at any time, they could increase their output, reduce produce loss, and sell at prices that benefit themselves, their families, and the communities in which they live. That’s what low-cost internet access, funded by the materially well-off members of society, can actualise.
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Final Words

It is true that financing internet access is just a step further from meeting more basic needs. And government does have to provide the enabling environment for rural communities to thrive. But citizens who aren’t government officials can play their part as well. One way to do this is through community-funded internet access, which can lead to communal prosperity.
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This article was first published on 4th May 2025
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ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.

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