Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Performance of Nigeria's Education Sector

This study examines the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption on the performance of Nigeria's education sector using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The findings indicate that AI adoption has a statistically significant positive effect on education sector performance, with a 1% increase in AI adoption leading to a 7.87% rise in industry performance (p-value: 0.031). Additionally, AI adoption, as a proxy for the digital economy, interacts with key economic drivers to enhance sectoral growth. Specifically, direct credit to the private sector (coefficient; 2.44, p-value;0.036), gross fixed capital formation (1.20, p-value; 0.010), service sector employment (20.97, p-value; 0.038), and government expenditure (1.83, p-value;0.011) all contribute significantly to improving education sector performance. Based on these findings, the study recommends targeted policy interventions to accelerate AI adoption, expand credit access to private sector players, boost infrastructure investment, promote employment in the service sector, and increase public expenditure on education. These measures will foster sustainable AI-driven growth in Nigeria's education sector. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on AI's role in driving education sector growth and offers actionable insights for policymakers.