Provision is not use: Why digital-resource investment underdelivers in African universities, and what libraries and educators should do

Many African universities have invested heavily in digital resources on the assumption that provision drives use, use builds competence, and competence brings ethical practice. Drawing on evidence concentrated in Nigeria, with other African and comparative studies, this review explains why that investment underdelivers and what information professionals should do. It identifies three practical problems: available resources go unused, literacy training does not reliably raise use, and ethics instruction does not reliably change behaviour, a gap now widened by generative artificial intelligence. The common thread is contextual: weak infrastructure, high cost, low awareness, and absent enforcement appear to gate whether capability becomes practice. Because interventions aimed at individual students alone are likely to keep underperforming, the review offers concrete guidance for libraries, curriculum designers, and policy-makers: embedding resource discovery into the point of need, teaching critical rather than technical literacy, and pairing deep artificial-intelligence literacy with enforceable institutional policy.