Nigeria may be standing before one of the greatest economic opportunities, or one of the most expensive mistakes in our history.
The African Development Bank,ADB, estimates that Artificial Intelligence could add almost *$1 trillion to Africa’s GDP by 2035.* That is the prize.
But there is another side to the equation: Who will own the computers, data centres, models, intellectual property and infrastructure producing this new wealth? And, who will be impoverished?
If Africans merely consume AI developed and computed elsewhere, much of the value created by our adoption will leave with our payments.
Nigerians in particular, will become poorer in ten years by ten times than they were thirty years ago. Worst still, we will be enslaved in an unsuspecting way for years and years without end.
Meanwhile, in a moving speech delivered at an event hosted by the Bill & Melinda gates Foundation, Dr. ‘Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, eloquently recounted growing up in a modest environment around an Agege bread bakery in Lagos.
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He explained how his childhood experience and early curiosity fueled his passion for technology and digital empowerment.
I had expected that he would use the occasion to push for partnership or ganner investments for the extremely urgent and important regression point Nigeria finds herself in the field of AI.
Unfortunately that did not happen.(Or maybe he did backdoor), however until we see that ‘our ice is melting’ , we are in great trouble.
President Emmanuel Macron understands the point l am driving at.
The French President’s increasing call for French and European companies to patronize domestic AI champions like Mistral AI aligns with their broader industry perspective on digital sovereignty and economic competitiveness.
The Strategic Intent is *Digital Sovereignty.*
Macron aims to prevent France in particular, from becoming a mere digital consumer or “vassal” to dominant tech powers in the United States and China.
In order to aid the building of local Infrastructure, he is encouraging the adoption of homegrown models. France hopes to sustain its local tech ecosystem, leverage its low-carbon nuclear energy for data centers, and retain high-value tech jobs.
European industrial capital is following that thinking: ASML invested €1.3 billion, about $1.5 billion directly in France’s Mistral AI, becoming its largest shareholder.
Nigeria must understand the same arithmetic.
*ECONOMY: WHEN COMPUTE BECOMES AN IMPORT*
Imagine that eventually 40 per cent of the AI-related operating cost of Nigerian governments, banks, telecommunications companies, universities and large corporations goes abroad for Cloud computing, models, specialised software and associated services. That 40 per cent is not merely an IT expense. It becomes a recurring import.
Every month we would export dollars to purchase intelligence produced on computers elsewhere, while automation simultaneously eliminates some Nigerian jobs.
It creates a dangerous circle: *import the technology, export the money, eliminate domestic labour, weaken household purchasing power—and return next month to buy more compute.*
This danger is particularly serious in a country where the World Bank says roughly *3.5 million people enter the labour force every year* and more than 60 per cent of Nigerians were estimated to be below the national poverty line in 2025.
*EDUCATION: CONSUMERS INSTEAD OF CREATORS*
You cannot build an AI superpower on an educational foundation that cannot produce enough mathematicians, engineers, researchers and scientists.
Nigeria already has millions of children outside school.
More frighteningly, among children who are inside classrooms, UNICEF reports that *86 per cent of Junior Secondary 2 pupils failed to reach minimum proficiency in mathematics in 2022*.
Government education expenditure fell from 9.3 per cent of total spending in 2015 to only 3.6 per cent in 2023.
Meanwhile, UNICEF reports that *78 per cent of Nigerian youths lack digital-literacy skills and fewer than half of teachers possess basic ICT skills.*
If this continues, by 2036 we could have millions of young Nigerians surrounded by Artificial Intelligence but incapable of building it. We will become excellent users of other people’s inventions.
*AGRICULTURE: THE FARMER WHO RENTS HIS INTELLIGENCE*
AI will transform agriculture. Soil analysis, weather forecasting, pest detection, irrigation, logistics, commodity pricing and precision farming will be driven by AI.
But suppose the Nigerian farmer’s satellite intelligence, agricultural software, Cloud processing and predictive models are controlled abroad permanently, we may have modernised agriculture while creating another dependency.
Nigeria already spent about *$2.34 billion in foreign exchange on food imports in 2025.* Agriculture therefore needs Nigerian-controlled data platforms, agricultural AI, drones, sensors and research. Not simply imported applications.
*DEFENCE: YOU CANNOT OUTSOURCE SOVEREIGNTY*
The most dangerous dependency may ultimately be defence.
Future warfare will increasingly involve autonomous systems, drones, cyberwarfare, satellite intelligence, surveillance, electronic warfare and AI-assisted command systems.
Europe’s largest defence-technology company, Thales, is already warning that AI is accelerating sophisticated cyberattacks and that defence itself must increasingly use AI.
A nation that cannot substantially understand, modify and ultimately build the digital systems protecting its electricity grid, financial system, communications and military infrastructure is not technologically sovereign.
You cannot and should no sub-contract national security indefinitely.
*ELECTRICITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE: BUILD THE POWER*
People say data centres consume enormous electricity. Precisely!
That is not an argument against Nigerian data centres. *It is an argument for Nigerian electricity.*
Build dedicated solar farms, gas-fired generation, hydro capacity, embedded power systems and eventually appropriate nuclear capacity. Power the industrial clusters. Build fibre. Build regional data centres. Build national high-performance computing facilities.
Indeed, Nigeria’s National AI Strategy already recognises this necessity: it proposes national HPC centres, domestic AI hardware and software development and energy arrangements designed to reduce dependence on the existing national grid.
Our problem is therefore becoming less about writing another beautiful policy and more about *funding, coordination, procurement, execution and continuity.*
*THE CHOICE BEFORE NIGERIA*
China did not become technologically formidable by simply purchasing everything its competitors invented.
India did not build its enormous technology sector by training its young people merely to consume software. They invested in education, research, reverse engineering, infrastructure, manufacturing and indigenous enterprise.
Nigeria does not have to copy China. *We must develop the Nigerian model.* Create a sovereign technology and AI development fund. Require government procurement to give meaningful preference to competitive Nigerian technology.
Finance universities to undertake commercially useful AI research.
Establish shared national computing infrastructure accessible to researchers and startups.
Encourage pension funds, banks and large corporations to invest patient capital in Nigerian technology companies.
Make reverse engineering, hardware engineering, robotics and semiconductor knowledge national priorities.
Nigeria’s population is projected to approach *288 million by 2035.* Whether those millions become producers of the AI economy or merely consumers of it is a decision we are making today.
This is where the Ministers of Finance, of Education and the Digital Economy must work together.
The danger is not Artificial Intelligence. *The danger is artificial intelligence without Nigerian ownership.*
If we automate Nigerian jobs with foreign compute, store Nigerian data on foreign-controlled infrastructure, pay recurring dollar subscriptions for foreign intelligence and neglect our own scientists and engineers, we will have invented a remarkably modern form of colonialism:
*We will supply the market, the data and the money, while somebody else owns the machine. That essentially is slavery*. What a shame!!
