Nigeria’s hopes of becoming the continent’s artificial intelligence (AI) powerhouse are in jeopardy due to the lack of digital infrastructure.
Nigeria brought together 120 stakeholders in April 2024 to create a National AI Strategy to stay up with the impending AI revolution. The strategy’s draft text, however, emphasises how the nation’s long-standing infrastructure shortfall may jeopardise its ambitions for artificial intelligence.
The report, made available to BrandSpur digital and technology news desk, demonstrates how obstacles to AI development and use include a lack of dependable internet connectivity, sturdy data ccenters and easily available cloud computing services.
Nigeria has nine submarine cables that bring internet capacity to its shores, but there is a 90,000-kilometer fibre infrastructure gap that makes internet access sluggish and inconsistent.
According to stakeholders: “Nigeria aspires to be a global leader in AI, but achieving this vision requires a foundational infrastructure for AI and other emerging technologies.”
Adding that: “This pillar addresses building affordable and localised infrastructure foundations and the compute capacity to support the thriving AI ecosystem in Nigeria,”
The report also emphasises how the nation now lacks the accelerated processing, data, and model stacks that modern data centres with AI age capabilities must have. The stakeholders noted that to satisfy the demands of AI research and use, the country’s existing data centers must be improved and scaled. As a result, the country is only now starting to develop its first hyper-scale data centre through Airtel Africa. Nigeria is ranked 11th and 140th in the world, respectively, for mobile and fixed broadband.
Nigeria ranks 106th out of 134 economies with a Network Readiness Index score of 35.73, according to the Portulans Institute. Nigeria ranks just 42.67 on the AI Infrastructure Index by Oxford Insights.
AI is characterised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a: “technological revolution that could jumpstart productivity, boost global growth, and raise incomes around the world.”
Nigeria’s AI market is anticipated to reach $434.4 million by 2026, and by 2030, artificial intelligence (AI) is predicted to contribute $2.9 trillion to the continent’s GDP.
The minister of communications, innovation, and the digital economy, Bosun Tijani, recently highlighted: “There will be a convergence of AI systems, so Nigeria should be part of that global superpower in the development and regulation of AI.”
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The draft National AI strategy suggests building national High-Performance Computing (HPC) to close these gaps, investing in the development of AI-specific hardware and software, establishing clean energy AI clusters to lessen reliance on the national grid, and providing tax breaks and other incentives to promote investment in essential AI infrastructure.
In addition to infrastructure, the paper emphasises that Nigeria’s AI goals would require the support of a strong and dynamic ecosystem of academic institutions, industry partners, and highly qualified labour.
However, Nigeria has started taking action to close some of the gaps that have been found. Tijani announced several initiatives during the AI workshop that marked the introduction of the AI plan, one of which was the reopening of the National Centre for Al and Robotics (NCAIR), which aims to advance research and development on emerging technologies.
In the next two to three years, the Ministry of Communications plans to install 90,000 km of fibre throughout the nation.
Tijani stated in an interview with the local news brand: “To ensure progress towards building the infrastructure needed for a robust digital economy in Nigeria, we understand that quality access is the backbone of a digital economy and have, therefore, focused on connectivity.”
The project will be carried out in cooperation with development finance organisations including the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB), with an estimated cost of $2 billion.
Nonetheless, some Nigerians have questioned whether the nation’s AI effort is focussing on the appropriate areas. Recently, Google West Africa’s director, Olumide Balogun, addressed these issues by saying: “When people think about AI, they always think about robotics and very geeky and technical things. But think about what we are already doing with AI, things like flood forecasting in the North, where forecasts on flooding can get people out of harm’s way and give the government notice. Think about things like prenatal care, disease control, and food security and you will find they are very close to what we need to do now.”
