• Tijani identifies electricity, connectivity as constraints to AI development
• Luminate puts Nigeria’s cloud infrastructure dependence at $850m
Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
The federal government has called for the pooling of artificial intelligence (AI) computing capacity among African countries, including Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Kenya, as part of efforts to overcome the continent’s infrastructure constraints and compete in the rapidly evolving global AI economy.
The Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, said this would support the development and deployment of large language models that individual countries might not have sufficient capacity to run independently.
Tijani, who was represented by the National Director of the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), Dr Olubunmi Ajala, spoke at the ‘Build 2026 Conference’ in Abuja yesterday.
The two-day Build 2026 Conference was convened by the Nigeria AI Collective which brings together civil society, academia, policymakers, innovators and other participants to advance the safe, ethical and inclusive development of AI in Nigeria.
The AI Collective is funded by Luminate, AI Collaborative, Ford Foundation and MacArthur Foundation, and is managed by the Lagos Business School (LBS), Data Science Nigeria (DSN), the Centre for Journalism, Innovation and Development (CJID) and NCAIR, and is led by the Policy Innovation Centre (PIC), which coordinates its policy engagement.
Other speakers at the conference included: The President of the MacArthur Foundation, John Palfrey; Dean and Professor of Information Systems at Lagos Business School and Pan-Atlantic University, Prof. Olayinka David-West as well as the Executive Director, CJID, Akintunde Babatunde, among others.
Tijani stressed that infrastructure remained one of the most significant obstacles to Nigeria’s AI ambitions, despite progress in developing a national strategy, building local expertise, training talent and encouraging the use of open-source models.
He explained that the proposed approach would enable Nigeria to connect its Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) with computing resources in other African countries, allowing researchers and developers to aggregate capacity for more demanding AI tasks.
“What we’re proposing and we know is that it’s possible for us to have a little AI scaling up. …We are proposing to have a GPU, but this GPU should not only serve all. It’s possible for us to connect our GPU to the GPU funded by the Gates Foundation in Rwanda. Same with Senegal and in Kenya,” he said.
Tijani added: “So if you want to build a large language model or you want to build something big, Nigerian capacity might not be big enough, but we could aggregate this for all of us, and you’ll be able to do what you want to do,” he stressed.
He said the arrangement could help African countries overcome the limitations of developing expensive computing infrastructure independently, while creating opportunities for regional cooperation in AI research, model development and deployment.
The minister further identified electricity, internet connectivity, cloud infrastructure and advanced computer chips as major challenges facing the sector, warning that the pace of technological change and global competition for computing equipment could leave countries such as Nigeria perpetually behind without deliberate investment and cooperation.
He said Nigeria was already working on some of these constraints, including a proposed regional data park project involving Nigeria and Togo, which he said would leverage available electricity capacity.
On connectivity, Ajala said about 20 million Nigerians remained unconnected, while the government was pursuing a fibre infrastructure initiative intended to expand broadband access across the country. He also highlighted the difficulty of securing advanced AI chipsets, noting that technology changes every few months and that global demand for the equipment was placing pressure on supply.
In her keynote address, the Chief Executive Officer of Luminate, Melanie Hui, warned that Nigeria’s dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure was costing the country an estimated $850 million annually, underscoring the economic consequences of Africa’s limited control over critical layers of the global AI value chain.
Hui said Africa’s position in the global AI economy would depend not merely on access to technology but on whether countries could influence how it was developed, governed and used, and retain a fair share of the resulting economic value.
“The research we commissioned estimates that this dependency costs Nigeria around $850 million each year,” she said, referring to the country’s reliance on cloud infrastructure provided by a handful of foreign companies.
Hui said the most powerful AI models depended on computer chips, cloud computing, data centres, electricity, water, data and highly skilled labour, with control over these resources translating into economic and political power.
She warned that without a deliberate strategy, African countries risked remaining consumers of technology developed elsewhere, suppliers of raw data, sources of critical minerals and providers of low-paid labour in an AI economy controlled by a small number of companies and countries.
In her remarks, the Executive Director of the Policy Innovation Centre (PIC), Dr Osasuyi Dirisu, said the Nigeria AI Collective was established to promote an ethical and inclusive AI ecosystem by bringing together stakeholders working across academia, innovation, agriculture, security, climate and other sectors.
Dirisu said AI should be regarded as an enabler for solving real problems and advancing social development, rather than an end in itself.
She stressed the need to develop local talent and digital skills, particularly as Nigeria grappled with concerns that AI adoption could displace workers.
With Nigeria’s large and youthful population, she said, developing the skills required for emerging digital jobs would be critical to preparing young people for changes in the labour market.
Dirisu also pointed to the role of the CJID, a member of the Collective, in addressing misinformation, disinformation and deepfakes through election monitoring, journalist training and public awareness initiatives.
Also speaking, Chief Executive Officer of Data Science Nigeria, Dr Olubayo Adekanbi, similarly urged Nigerians to acquire AI skills, arguing that the technology could improve productivity and create new forms of employment even as it changes existing jobs.
Adekanbi said the impact of AI should be assessed by weighing the jobs and tasks it might displace against the new opportunities it could create and the productivity gains it could deliver.
He cited healthcare as an example, saying AI could help doctors diagnose conditions more efficiently and reach more patients, while leaving final decisions to human professionals.
On the use of AI to spread false information during elections, Adekanbi said existing tools could help verify online claims but argued that similar capabilities needed to be made accessible to people who lacked internet access.
He proposed a system through which people could use mobile phones to submit claims and receive responses indicating whether the information was accurate.