The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has reaffirmed the Federal Government’s commitment to building a responsible, inclusive and sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem that positions Nigeria as a producer, not just a consumer, of AI technologies.
Inuwa made this known while delivering a virtual address at the InnovateAI Conference held in Lagos, where policymakers, technology leaders and innovators gathered to examine the future of artificial intelligence and its role in driving Nigeria’s digital economy.
He said Nigeria’s ambition, as articulated in the National AI Strategy, is to transition from merely using AI tools developed elsewhere to architecting and building indigenous AI systems that reflect national values and development priorities.
“Our goal is not just to use AI, but to architect and build our own AI systems in Nigeria,” he said, stressing that the country must take ownership of its AI future.
According to him, Nigeria’s approach to AI goes beyond innovation and deployment to encompass governance, infrastructure, data sovereignty and adaptive policy frameworks.
“Responsible AI is never a finished job; it is an iterative journey. Our policies must evolve as the technology evolves, and we must avoid frozen laws by adopting living policies that adapt over time,” he said.
He cited the implementation of the Digital Economy and E-Governance Bill as a mechanism for generating insights to refine AI regulations and governance structures.
Inuwa also drew attention to the issue of data representation in global AI systems, noting that many existing models are trained predominantly on non-African datasets, often resulting in bias against local dialects, cultures and demographics.
“If a model shows bias against a local dialect or demographic, we cannot just patch it. We must reinvest in infrastructure to retrain it with inclusive and representative local datasets,” he stated.
He emphasised that building national AI infrastructure is essential to achieving data sovereignty and preventing Nigeria from becoming merely an end user of foreign-developed systems.
The NITDA boss further called for strategic partnerships with global technology companies and hyperscalers to develop AI infrastructure within Nigeria while ensuring alignment with local values and priorities.
“The world today is a global village. We need to work with global players, but they must understand our local nuances and help us build the infrastructure to retrain and develop AI models that reflect our context,” he said.
He added that adopting a comprehensive AI lifecycle approach — from responsible data collection and governance to deployment and continuous feedback — would enable Nigeria to move from reacting to global AI developments to proactively designing homegrown systems.
“Without understanding how AI models are trained, how decisions are made, and how models are retrained, it will be difficult to build a responsible and trustworthy AI system,” he warned.
Inuwa reaffirmed that the Federal Government is intentional about promoting responsible AI and is collaborating with stakeholders across the technology ecosystem to co-design national AI guardrails, describing platforms such as the InnovateAI Conference and other national dialogues as vital to shaping Nigeria’s AI future.
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