Broadband Infrastructure and Digital Entrepreneurship: Empirical Insights from Nigeria’s Emerging Economy

This study empirically investigates the relationship between broadband infrastructure and the growth of digital entrepreneurship in Nigeria’s emerging economy. Broadband connectivity is increasingly recognized as a critical enabler of digital enterprise formation, innovation diffusion, and productivity growth in developing countries. Using secondary time- series data spanning three decades, this study estimates the effect of broadband penetration and supporting digital variables on the expansion of digital entrepreneurial activities in Nigeria. The analysis is anchored on infrastructure-led growth and endogenous growth theories and employs multiple regression techniques for empirical estimation. The results reveal that broadband penetration, internet usage, and ICT investment exert positive and statistically significant effects on digital entrepreneurship. These findings align with Nigeria-specific digital infrastructure evidence reported by Eke (2019) and Eke and El-Yaqub (2018), as well as earlier broadband–enterprise linkages observed in mobile technology adoption studies (Eke, 2012). The outcomes also support broader international evidence that broadband access accelerates entrepreneurial activity and firm creation in developing economies (Qiang C Rossotto, 2009; Czernich et al., 2011). The study concludes that broadband infrastructure constitutes a foundational pillar for Nigeria’s digital entrepreneurial ecosystem. Policy implications emphasize the urgency of sustained broadband investment, improved ICT regulation, and targeted digital entrepreneurship support programs. The study contributes to the growing digital economics literature by providing Nigeria-specific empirical evidence on how broadband infrastructure shapes entrepreneurial outcomes in emerging markets.