Minding the economics of information

In most parts of the world, a farmer will decide what to plant based on what he hears about market prices. A shop owner decides whether to take a loan based on what she understands about government policy. A family decides whether to vaccinate a child based on what they trust about health information. These are economic choices, but they start with information. When that information is unreliable or out of reach, the cost is not just confusion. It is bad decisions, missed opportunities, and higher risk. Yet in development thinking, we still treat information as commentary rather than as infrastructure.

We measure development in roads and power plants. We rarely measure it by the quality of information people receive. But no economy works well without trusted signals about risk, policy, and opportunity. When those signals are distorted, markets misprice assets, institutions lose credibility, and inequality grows. Information is not a side issue in development. It is one of its core inputs.

At the heart of this is a simple fact: trust has economic value. Markets depend on reliable signals. Investors depend on credible disclosures. Households depend on accurate news to make decisions about work, health, and politics. When those signals are polluted by falsehoods or buried in noise, the cost of doing business rises. Uncertainty grows. Inequality deepens. What looks like a media problem quickly becomes a growth problem.

Public interest journalism plays a central role here. It narrows the gap between those who hold power and those who do not. It exposes corruption that distorts competition. It brings policy choices into public view. In practical terms, it lowers the cost of participation in society. When journalism weakens, only those with money or connections can afford reliable information. Information becomes a private good instead of a public one, and the divide between insiders and everyone else widens.

This is why many policy thinkers now describe public interest media as economic infrastructure. Some have argued that journalism is as essential to modern economies as central banks are to financial systems, because it provides the trust and accountability that allow markets to function

Yet funding patterns tell a different story. Despite the scale of today’s information crisis, independent media receives only a tiny share of development finance. Between 2016 and 2022, just 0.05 per cent of official development assistance went directly to media organisations in partner countries, according to the International Fund for Public Interest Media. This is hard to defend. We invest heavily in sectors that depend on information, while neglecting the system that produces and checks that information.

The effects are already visible. Disinformation weakens public health responses. Weak investigative reporting allows financial crimes to continue unnoticed. Political instability driven by rumor and manipulation raises the cost of doing business. These are not abstract harms. They show up in lost productivity, capital flight, and falling trust.

The rise of artificial intelligence raises the stakes further. AI systems learn from the information environment we create. If that environment is polluted, automated systems will repeat and amplify distortion at scale. In this sense, journalism is not only about informing people today. It also shapes the data that future systems will rely on. Accurate reporting becomes a form of economic insurance.

For African economies, and Nigeria in particular, this matters deeply. Media markets are fragile. Advertising is unstable, audiences are fragmented, and political pressure is constant. Left to market forces alone, public interest journalism will keep shrinking. This is not a failure of journalists. It is a failure of how we pay for information.

What must be done

First, information must be treated as economic infrastructure, not an afterthought. Public policy should recognise journalism and access to credible information as basic goods, like education or transport. Media support should be built into development and governance plans, not left on the margins.

Second, funding models must change. Short-term grants do not match the role journalism plays in society. What is needed are long-term solutions: endowment-style funds, pooled donor mechanisms, and hybrid vehicles that spread risk and provide stability. These must be independently governed so that editorial freedom is protected.

Third, market failure in the media sector must be acknowledged. Advertising alone cannot sustain journalism that serves the public interest. Governments, foundations, and development partners should invest in media viability as a public good, just as they invest in health or education. This is not about buying opinions. It is about protecting the information layer that allows other investments to work.

Fourth, the private sector has a role to play, especially technology companies that profit from information flows. Their contribution should go beyond charity toward structured participation in funding public interest media, through partnerships or sector-wide funds that recycle digital value back into trustworthy content.

Finally, the information environment must be seen as a strategic input into new technologies. As artificial intelligence relies more heavily on large volumes of data, journalism becomes part of how those systems are governed. Investing in accurate reporting is not only about informing citizens today. It is about ensuring that future tools are trained on reliable material rather than distortion.

To mind the economics of information is to accept that journalism is not a luxury of development; it is a condition for it. When citizens cannot access reliable information, they cannot hold institutions to account. When investors cannot trust what they see, they cannot allocate capital well. When communities cannot tell fact from fiction, social cohesion weakens.

Information is already doing economic work, whether we admit it or not. The choice is whether we invest in it deliberately, or keep paying the higher price of neglect.

Lily Adimefe, Executive Director, BusinessDay Foundation