Minister of Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani said Nigeria need to develop a national strategy to harness the power of Artificial Intelligence for its sustainable growth. The Minister made this known when he shared a document titled, ‘Co-creating a National Artificial Intelligence Strategy for Nigeria’ on his X handle today saying the AI should be viewed as a multi-purpose technology transforming production and service delivery, with a potential to impact positively on Nigerian economy and social growth.
Quoting from the International Finance Corporation, the ministry revealed that the strategic adoption of Al could add up to $234 billion to Africa’s GDP by 2030. Noting that along with the opportunities, Al governance also poses some complex socio-technical challenges being a third world country.
The Minister said, “As algorithms are deployed in high-stake domains like healthcare, finance, and security, concerns are emerging around ethics, bias, transparency, job automation, and privacy. Both policymakers and researchers are of a consensus that a human-cantered approach is essential to ensure Al systems are fair and accountable to all, across gender, ethnic and socioeconomic groups.”
The document further revealed that a national AI strategy for the country would be produced that will revolutionise towards achieving national goals that would be cantered around job creation, social inclusion and sustainable development that has become relevant.
The document added, “With collaborative leadership, Nigeria seeks to pioneer ethical and inclusive Al innovation that improves welfare and expands opportunities for all its citizens.”
According to the ministry, it would work towards building on the existing work done by the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, to develop a national AI strategy as well as working on the expansion of co-creation approach to engage and include top Al researchers of Nigerian descent globally, in the process of crafting the national Al strategy.
