Nigeria used its role as host of the African Telecommunications Union’s Conference of Plenipotentiaries to unveil a continental artificial intelligence initiative focused on developing large language models rooted in African languages. The announcement added a substantive policy initiative to the two-day meeting in Abuja, which also featured leadership elections and institutional declarations.

The ATU provides a forum for African governments and sector stakeholders to coordinate telecommunications and digital policy priorities, including positions on connectivity, spectrum and emerging technologies. That made the Abuja meeting a venue not only for internal governance decisions but also for setting shared continental priorities in areas where national policies increasingly overlap.

Dr Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, launched the ATLAS Network on the conference’s opening day. The project builds on Nigeria’s existing N-ATLAS initiative and invites other ATU member states to participate in a shared platform intended to ensure that African languages, cultures and knowledge systems influence the AI technologies increasingly being deployed across the continent.

The language focus is significant because large language models depend heavily on the data used to train and evaluate them, and many African languages remain underrepresented in major digital datasets. Without deliberate data and model-development efforts, widely used AI tools can provide weaker support for low-resource languages and local contexts than they do for languages with larger online corpora.

The initiative was presented as part of a broader argument that Africa should not remain a passive recipient of global technology decisions. Vice President Kashim Shettima, represented at the opening session by Senator Ibrahim Hadejia, said global technology policy has too often been shaped without African input. He argued that the continent must move beyond simply being present at the table and begin actively shaping outcomes.

Tijani made a similar case to delegates, saying Africa must approach global digital negotiations prepared, united and credible if it wants its interests reflected in rules being developed elsewhere.

The optimism around the opening-day AI agenda was followed by a competitive leadership contest on the second day, as delegates went through four rounds of voting to choose who would lead the union for the next four years.

Zambia’s Kezias Kazuba Mwale, who has served as the ATU’s Director of Radiocommunications since 2012, ultimately won the Secretary General position with 21 of the 34 votes cast in the final round. The margin indicated a contested race among member states over the union’s direction rather than the emergence of a consensus candidate.

Mwale is scheduled to take office on January 1, 2027. In his acceptance remarks, he described leadership as a trust to be protected rather than a privilege to be enjoyed. Outgoing Secretary General John Omo reinforced that message, urging member states to carry forward the conference’s decisions with the same trust and common purpose that produced them.

In addition to the AI announcement and the leadership election, the conference delivered several procedural outcomes that will shape the ATU’s operations through 2031.

Nigeria formally received the Conference of Plenipotentiaries chairmanship from Algeria, placing the country in a position to help guide implementation of decisions taken in Abuja during the next institutional cycle. Delegates also elected 25 member states to the ATU Administrative Council.

The conference further adopted the 2026 Abuja Declaration on Meaningful Connectivity. The declaration commits signatories to technology-neutral regulation, expanded access to spectrum and fibre infrastructure, stronger cybersecurity and consumer protection, and targeted attention to affordability and digital literacy for women, young people, people with disabilities and underserved communities.

The two-day meeting reflected an effort by the continental body to advance institutional coordination while also addressing emerging technology priorities. The ATLAS Network represents a push to build AI infrastructure before foreign models fully define how African languages and contexts are represented in widely used technologies.

At the same time, the four-round Secretary General vote showed that converting shared ambition into coordinated action may be complex, with member states divided over priorities and pace. For Nigeria, chairing the union through the next cycle means taking on a role in reconciling those differences while also helping deliver the connectivity and AI commitments included in the Abuja Declaration.