The busiest airport in Lagos is offering free WiFi. Sort of.

Brilliant. As of Monday, Lagos’ main airport finally has free WiFi.

Murtala Muhammed International Airport will be the first public airport to have it in Nigeria. The departing Minister for Aviation announced it via twitter last Wednesday morning.

But then, he back-tracked slightly. Obviously when someone says “free”, they mean, “for a bit”.

Nonetheless, the development is a welcome one in a country where 27 per cent of the population own a smart phone, and only 1 per cent own a home landline. The duality of lagging development but rapidly increasing use of technology has made the house-phone a non-existent phenomenon in West African cities.

The Lagos State Government recently announced its plans to create WiFi hubs in three public parks, too. But the announcement gave no clue as to when this would happen; neither was it clear whether it would be free in the 20 minute sense of the word or some other.

Whilst it is not exactly a WiFi blitz on Africa’s largest city, it reflects a belated impetus on the part of government policy to catch-up with the modern realities of increasingly tech-savy Nigerians. Public WiFi availability in the city is scarce, but its potential to help grow Lagos’ economy is huge. According to the World Bank, for every 10 per cent of broadband penetration, a country’s GDP grows by 1.28 per cent. Or, in less technical termsL the more WiFi, the more capacity to make money.

It is yet to be seen whether the new government in Lagos, which will kick off on Friday, will quicken or even continue the current plans. But the surge in smart phone usage in Lagos will hopefully be persuasive.

Incidentally, Murtala Muhammad International Airport is the ninth of the ten busiest airports in Africa. Here are the rest:

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