By Waziri Mahdi Isa
The Managing Director of Galaxy Backbone, Prof. Ibrahim Adeyanju, has listed five major reasons why AI is not growing fast in Nigeria.
He mentioned this at the 3rd Biennial Postgraduate Conference of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria on Tuesday.
According to him, the five problems are: poor infrastructure like lack of power and poor internet; lack of skilled people because schools are teaching old courses and labs are not well equipped; lack of Nigerian data to train AI; AI bias where foreign AI does not understand Nigerian context; and fear that AI may take jobs.
He said AI can help Nigeria a lot if we use it well. It can help farmers detect plant diseases early, help doctors attend to more patients, help banks give loans to poor people, help government collect taxes and manage identity better, help teachers teach large classes, and help build AI models that can speak Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Pidgin.
To solve the problems, he suggested five things which he termed. I-C-T-A-I. First, build strong infrastructure like broadband and data centres. Second, train more people from primary school to university. Third, build trust by protecting people’s data. Fourth, build Nigerian solutions for our own problems. Fifth, support innovation by funding research and connecting universities with companies.
He said no one can do it alone. Government, companies and universities must work together.
He also said Galaxy Backbone is already helping through its Nigeria AI Scaling Hub. This is a shared computer system that researchers, students, start-ups and government can use to build and test Nigerian AI solutions, instead of depending on foreign platforms.
He challenged every university to start at least one AI programme with a company, do one real-life AI project in health, farming or language, and share the results within one year.
He told lecturers to update their courses, told companies to work with universities and give students real internships, and told students to start learning to code and build solutions now while they are still in school.