Nigeria's progress in artificial intelligence will ultimately be measured by the local problems it solves, panellists said at "The State of AI in Nigeria," a session held at Moonshot by TechCabal, TechCabal's annual technology conference, on Thursday, 29 October. The panel cautioned that the country can adopt the latest AI tools and still fail to address the challenges that matter most to Nigerians.

The session featured Olubunmi Okunowo, a senior programme officer at the Gates Foundation, the global philanthropic foundation focused on health and development; Johnson Agogbua, founder and CEO of Kasi Cloud, a Lagos-based data-centre operator whose facilities provide the computing capacity AI systems rely on; and Dr Yetunde Anibaba, a senior lecturer and accreditation lead at Lagos Business School. Dr Olubayo Adekambi, founder and CEO of Data Scientists Network, an organisation focused on building Nigeria's data science and AI talent base, moderated the discussion.

"We're building AI, but there are lots of nuances that people in the field who use these tools have that we must incorporate into our building," Okunowo said. Technical skill alone does not produce useful tools, he added; developers need to work alongside people who understand the problem first-hand.

A 2024 GSMA report on AI use cases in Nigeria reinforces that point, finding that local data, skills and infrastructure determine whether AI tools get built and used, and that products that ignore local languages and working conditions risk shutting out the very people they are meant to serve.

Agogbua argued that the principal value AI should deliver in Nigeria is productivity, pointing to healthcare and agriculture as sectors where the technology could change how work gets done.

Building the right tool, however, still leaves the challenge of getting it to people. Anibaba said affordability and access decide whether AI reaches those who need it. She pointed to the Nigeria AI Scaling Hub, hosted at Lagos Business School and supported by the Gates Foundation, which helps AI products scale in healthcare, agriculture and education. She also called for clearer policy to speed up adoption, particularly in healthcare.

Taken together, the panel's message was that Nigeria's AI progress will be judged by the local problems it solves. For founders, that means working with domain experts from the start, building for the people who will use the product, and planning for cost, access and regulation before launch. How those conditions develop — in policy clarity and in the reach and affordability of the tools that emerge — will offer a measure of whether that standard is being met.