Embedded Podcast: No Wahalas. My chat with Hon. Bosun Tejani on Nigeria's AI blueprint
Bosun Tijani, Nigeria's Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy on not waiting for perfect conditions but building now.
Hon. 'Bosun Tijani, Nigeria's Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy was once a tech entrepreneur himself. He co-founded and led Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB), an African innovation center with presence in Nigeria, Kenya, and Rwanda. Since its launch over a decade ago, CcHUB has become the home for more than 50 Nigerian start-ups, including BudgIT, Wecyclers, Lifebank, GoMyWay, Vacantboards, and Autobox. In 2021, he was recognized and honoured with the Global icon of African excellence Award by the New African Magazine, which is the oldest annual listing of Africa’s most influential people.
Bosun talked to me about how Nigeria is not waiting for perfect conditions - they're building with what they have, and actually creating local solutions to problems. Nigeria's approach targets productivity across every sector:
Leveraging their digitally savvy youthful population (average age 16.9) who can quickly adapt to AI innovation
Fiber optic network expansion
Push for Nigerian investors to fund AI development
And (no surprise!) their advanced innovation hub strategy
Watch The Full Episode:
Nigeria's AI Strategy:
🚀 Focusing on productivity enhancement across key sectors including agriculture, healthcare, and education.
👨💻 The critical importance of moving beyond mobile-first to investing in fiber optic networks and computing infrastructure. Nigeria is currently expanding the nation's fiber optic network from 35,000 to 125,000 kilometers to improve connectivity.
🌍 The need for African nations to build their own language models rather than outsourcing their digital realities to others. Right now AI capabilities being built including local language models that reflect Nigeria's linguistic diversity and digitizing national archives and government data to provide training datasets for local AI.
🏢 Creating innovation hubs with shared infrastructure where entrepreneurs can access computing resources and develop solutions. They have created the Three Million Technical Talents (3MTT) program to make Nigeria a "net exporter of talent".
📊 Reimagining regulation as a tool to open opportunities.
👥 Developing the National AI Trust to engage influential Nigerian investors in supporting AI
🔬 The importance of research and development partnerships with nations that have decades of AI expertise while balancing collaboration with national sovereignty needs.
On Productivity
If agriculture is operating optimally, education operating optimally, transport optimally, then you start to see a level of production in the economy that guarantees returns that will strengthen the GDP, but also provide resources that the government can leverage to build infrastructure but most importantly, provide job opportunities. This is what AI brings.
Forever Young
If only…
When we spoke about Nigeria’s plans for skills development, Bosun highlighted Africa's demographic advantage: the tools and platforms for the youth
It's not like 20 years ago, where you probably need to go to MIT or you need to go to Oxford to become an artificial intelligence expert. There are also platforms that have curated learning opportunities. But of course, we must create the infrastructure to back that. I think the first one is connectivity.
Today, YouTube or other more curated online platforms have been able to share this far and wide. But what's missing isn't the knowledge itself but the platforms, infrastructure, and frameworks that allow young people to access and apply it.
Beyond Mobile-First: Building Real Digital Infrastructure
Bosun’s most interesting point challenged a long-held assumption about priorities in building up Africa's tech development
African nations need to move away from that old narrative of mobile first to investing in fiber optic network across the continent where young people who want to build AI can access affordable computers, but actually be able to process good AI models and use their laptops for that, because mobile will not be sufficient for the kind of generation of people that we have.
Mobile phones were revolutionary for basic connectivity and services, however phones alone cannot do the job. We need comprehensive digital infrastructure and widespread access to the internet - and that is where Nigeria is walking the talk by expanding its fiber optic network from 35,000 to 125,000 kilometers - a massive investment in the backbone infrastructure needed for ensuring the benefits of AI are accessible to all.
Beyond connectivity, Bosun emphasized two other critical infrastructure components:
Community innovation hubs where entrepreneurs can access shared resources
Processing power so African AI developers aren't priced out of the market by compute costs
Watch The Full Episode
On Skilling up
We need to focus on skilling these people. Community spaces like innovation hubs - now we need to think of more advanced innovation hubs, where these people can go. They can find like-minded people. Serendipity can happen. They can create solutions that can actually help us solve our problems in society.
The Rundown Studio is focused on skilling talent in the communication space with AI tools and new workflows in emerging markets. We are working on solving this problem with our Academy, Embedded, Pressmate, Wanja and a Newsroom Mis/DisHandbook.
On Data Sovereignty
Bosun made a compelling case using Iceland as a counterexample:
The only way we can change that is for nations to understand what it means for them not to be captured in AI. And that can come only from sovereignty. If I use the example of Iceland, people think sovereignty - Iceland actually took their realities and gave it to OpenAI, because they thought, 'We're too small of a nation. We don't want to be building our own language model.' So that is the reality - that's a national decision. A national decision was taken…
When a nation outsources its linguistic and cultural representation to foreign AI models, it's effectively surrendering its digital identity. He says Nigeria, with over 500 languages, including three spoken by more than 50 million people each, can't afford the same compromise. Their linguistic and cultural footprint is too large and too valuable to hand over to Silicon Valley companies.
What's Coming Next on Embedded
Stay tuned for our last episode of this special series, featuring Maxwell Gomera, UNDP Resident Representative in South Africa. We'll be exploring how international organizations are partnering with African nations to build inclusive AI strategies that address the continent's most pressing challenges.
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