Nigeria's tech leaders are pushing for homegrown artificial intelligence solutions and better infrastructure to shape Africa's digital landscape. They made these calls at the 2026 Women in Technology and Engineering Summit and Awards.
The summit brought together innovators, policymakers, and industry experts under the theme "Engineering Africa's Future: Innovation, Infrastructure and Inclusive Technology." Participants stressed that local solutions matter more than imported ones.
Niyi Yusuf, chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, told attendees to start with real problems before adopting AI. He warned against deploying technology just to keep up with competitors.
"Start from the business opportunity you are trying to solve before using AI and not necessarily for competition," Yusuf said. According to him, clear business needs and relevant data must drive AI adoption.
Yusuf cautioned against copying foreign models without adjusting them for Africa. He emphasized that technology must fit local languages, environments, and user behaviour patterns.
"The price for blind copy and paste is the graveyard," he noted. "Things can be done well if they are conceptualised for the environment."
Hannatu Adegboyega, a sales and people management leader, stressed the importance of designing solutions around actual user needs. Innovators must understand who they're building for, she added.
"Building an inclusive solution is important. It is really for who has the pain point," Adegboyega told reporters.
She called for users to be involved at every stage of development.
Infrastructure emerged as another critical piece of the puzzle. Ibiyemi Lawani, an energy and IT administrator at Chevron International Exploration and Production, said reliable infrastructure determines whether technologies succeed.
"Reliable infrastructure really matters because technology is useful when humans can access it," Lawani explained. She noted that affordability must match reliability in infrastructure development.
Dotun Adeoye, co-founder of AI in Nigeria, pointed to a major gap in global AI systems. Most AI solutions come from Western markets, he said, creating serious bias problems.
"A lot of AI solutions came from the United States or the West. There is a bias because AI tools have been built by Westerners," Adeoye noted.
This means these systems often fail when applied to African contexts.
AI-generated images and datasets frequently miss African realities entirely. Adeoye stressed the need to train models using local pictures, languages, and cultural information.
"With Generative AI, you can train it with pictures. To build AI products for Nigeria, you need to be customer-centric," he added.
Building AI systems on African data would help eliminate existing biases.
Experts at the summit agreed that Africa's tech future depends on three pillars: locally rooted solutions, strong infrastructure, and inclusive participation. Without these foundations, the continent risks falling further behind in the digital age.
