Nigeria must address infrastructure gap for AI adoption – Expert
Igbalajobi said that, first and foremost , the necessary infrastructure had to be in place before such an innovation could be well utilised by Nigerians.
A tech enthusiast, Mr. Olatunji Igbalajobi, said on Monday that Nigeria needed to work on its infrastructure gap to be fully prepared for artificial intelligence (AI) adoption.
Igbalajobi, who is the managing partner at Cyber Code Ltd., an information technology (IT) firm, told the newsmen in an interview in Lagos.
According to him, just like any other developing country, Nigeria has significant challenges in preparing for AI adoption.
Igbalajobi said that, first and foremost , the necessary infrastructure had to be in place before such an innovation could be well utilised by Nigerians.
“Looking at the current state of our technology, you will agree with me that we are still growing, pretty much in the area of broadband penetration increment.
“For instance, if we go to some of the rural areas, one can see that they do not have reliable internet access, so how can they deploy AI in such environments?
“No doubt, there are some regulations in place that can help in the area of data management, which also has a lot of role in AI development and adoption.
“For example, we have the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) spanning from 2020 to 2030, and the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) focusing on data management and security is also there,” he said.
Igbalajobi, however, noted that there are still issues with the implementation and enforcement of all these regulations.
He added that there was a need for more comprehensive and updated regulations, physically addressing AI and advanced security threats, noting that these are areas in which the country still has a lacuna.
On the positive side, he said Nigeria had a vibrant tech community that had already started exploring AI solutions, especially in the fintech industry.
He said the majority of them rely on AI solutions for transactions, API integration, and some other data analytics sets.
The managing partner said most fintechs were trying to ensure that they could do transactions with little or no human interaction.
He noted further that another area of weakness in the country was higher education, training, and investment.
“AI research is still very low in Nigeria and Africa as a whole; I think this is another area where the government needs to focus on,” Igbalajobi said.