The Director-General of Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has urged African nations to build up their own data sets and computing infrastructure to fully harness artificial intelligence (AI), warning that policy fragmentation and dependence on foreign technologies could stall progress.
Speaking in Lagos on Tuesday during a panel titled “Shaping Africa’s Digital Future: Policy and Regulatory Frameworks for Accelerated Growth” at Hyperscalers Convergence Africa 2025, Abdullahi said AI could prove even more transformative for Africa than the mobile revolution that reshaped its telecommunications and payments sectors two decades ago.
“The question is, how can we harness it? One of the big challenges we are having in Africa is policy fragmentation and uncertainty. That’s why most of the big tech companies are not willing to come and invest and build in Africa. But do we have to wait for them? Can’t we build it ourselves?” he said.
He emphasized that Africa’s lack of legacy infrastructure is an advantage, allowing it to leap directly to developing AI-native solutions rooted in local realities.
“We need to build up our own data. The AI we are building should use our datasets – not data from other regions, and we need to have computing power that can help us achieve that.”
Drawing parallels with Africa’s mobile-telephony leapfrog, Abdullahi said local innovators once proved skeptics wrong by building solar-powered networks in regions without electricity.
“When people doubted that Africans would buy mobile phones, pioneers built networks from the ground up. We can do the same with AI.”
The NITDA CEO underscored the importance of inclusive policymaking in attracting investment and ensuring sustainability. He emphasized that “Policy-making should not be government officials sitting in their offices using abstract theories. We need to carry everyone along, including industry players, innovators, and civil society. Otherwise, the policy will end up on the shelf.”
He said Nigeria’s National AI Strategy was built through this collaborative model, engaging local experts and practitioners to shape practical and globally competitive frameworks.
As the US, China, and Europe race to dominate generative AI, chips, and large-scale computing, Abdullahi stressed that Africa must define its own lane.
“As Africans, we need to look at our potential. We don’t have to align only with the West or East. We can build our own systems — and bring both sides to work with us in achieving our goals.”
