Nearly every Nigerian health worker in a new survey has heard of AI in medicine. Far fewer say they could actually use it.
Researchers surveyed 761 healthcare professionals across multiple disciplines and practice settings in Nigeria between December 2025 and March 2026, using a structured questionnaire on awareness, attitudes, preparedness and barriers. Awareness of AI in healthcare came in at 92.6%. But 40.9% rated their own knowledge as low or very low, and only 63.0% felt adequately prepared to use AI clinically. The biggest reported obstacles were lack of training (84.7%), poor infrastructure (71.1%), high cost of AI tools (61.0%), fear of job displacement (60.6%), and ethical and data-privacy concerns (roughly 53% each). Preparedness varied significantly by geopolitical zone, and awareness varied significantly by professional group.
The interesting part isn't the skills gap, it's the appetite despite it. 92.5% of respondents want training, and 78.7% back adding AI education to undergraduate curricula. Professionals who felt prepared also reported meaningfully more positive attitudes toward AI (3.74 vs. 3.46 on the study's scale) than those who didn't. Read plainly, that's a workforce asking for the resources to catch up, not one resisting the technology.
Which makes the barrier list worth sitting with: training, infrastructure and cost rank above job-loss fear or ethics worries. That's a policy and budget problem dressed up as a technology story, and no amount of AI marketing changes what it costs to fix.