Joy Agwunobi
Leaders from Nigeria’s telecommunications sector and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) have issued a warning that Africa’s ambitions to compete in an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven global economy are at risk unless governments, operators, cloud providers, and technology stakeholders move swiftly to close the continent’s widening infrastructure and talent gaps.
Speaking at the Africa Hyperscalers high-level virtual forum, Aminu Maida, executive vice chairman of the NCC, said the continent stands at a pivotal moment. The quality and availability of digital infrastructure, he argued, will determine whether Africa becomes a creator of AI technologies or remains a passive consumer of innovations developed elsewhere.
“We risk being stuck as AI consumers, not AI creators. Countries that invest in the right foundations will unlock new productivity, new jobs, and new opportunities. Those that fail will simply consume innovations built elsewhere,” Maida said during his keynote address titled “AI-Ready Africa: Building the Compute, Cloud and Connectivity Foundations for the Next Digital Leap.”
Maida identified three interlinked barriers threatening Africa’s AI future. The first, the compute divide, reflects limited high-performance computing and data centre capacity across the continent. The second, the algorithmic divide, sees African languages, cultural contexts, and environmental considerations largely absent from global AI models. The third, the data divide, highlights fragmented, inaccessible, or offshore-controlled datasets that prevent local innovation.
To overcome these gaps, Maida said the NCC is prioritising expanded national connectivity, greater cloud adoption, stronger cybersecurity, open-access frameworks, and the local development of trusted datasets. He stressed that achieving an AI-ready Africa will require coordinated action among regulators, operators, hyperscalers, and infrastructure providers.
Telecoms at the Forefront of AI Adoption
Tony Izuagbe Emoekpere, president of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), emphasised the urgency of immediate action. He noted that AI is no longer aspirational in the telecoms sector, citing practical opportunities in predictive maintenance, network optimisation, operational intelligence, and customer engagement.
However, Emoekpere warned that without stronger industry coordination and strategic investment in next-generation networks, these opportunities risk being delayed or missed entirely.
Building the foundations for AI
A panel of industry leaders including representatives from MTN Nigeria, Tizeti, NITDA, IHS Towers, Vertiv, and Open Access Data Centres,explored the practical steps required to support AI-ready networks. MTN’s Bukola Ajayi highlighted that connectivity and energy remain decisive enablers, noting that AI-era data centres demand high availability, advanced cooling systems, and resilient power infrastructure.
Wilson Eigbadon of Vertiv added that Africa’s data centres are entering a new phase, where decentralised energy solutions and self-sustaining power systems will be critical to maintaining reliability. Mike Salem from IHS Towers emphasised that no single company or country can develop AI infrastructure alone, calling for an ecosystem approach to ensure collaborative growth.
Talent development as a strategic priority
Experts at the forum also stressed the need to build local AI talent. Dotun Adeoye, co-founder of AI in Nigeria, warned that despite the continent’s youthful population of 63 percent under 25 the region will lag if it does not rapidly train AI engineers and infrastructure specialists.
“Infrastructure and data alone won’t be enough. We need local talent to drive and sustain AI innovation,” Adeoye said.
The Africa Hyperscalers forum, supported by Vertiv and ATCON, provided a rare multi-sector platform for discussing the infrastructure, governance, and investment frameworks required to prepare Africa for large-scale AI adoption. Participants agreed that closing compute, data, and algorithmic gaps is now a matter of urgency. How quickly Africa moves to address these challenges, they said, will determine the continent’s competitiveness in the AI-driven digital economy for decades to come.
