The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai on Wednesday met with Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu in Paris, where both leaders discussed a partnership to expand Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills in Nigeria.
Pichai first shared a picture of the meeting with Tinubu on X, noting that the discussions centered on the immense potential of AI in Nigeria.
“It was great meeting with President Tinubu @officialABAT.
“We talked about the immense potential of AI in Nigeria, and how we can partner to expand AI skills, enable innovation, and support Nigeria’s growing tech ecosystem,” Pichai posted.
Commitment to AI in Nigeria
Responding to the post, the Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, who was also at the meeting, described the discussions as “extremely productive”.
According to him, the meeting demonstrated the Nigerian government’s commitment to AI and Google’s ongoing support towards developing AI skills and innovation in critical sectors in Nigeria.
Last year, Google announced two separate AI initiatives in Nigeria in partnership with the Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, both aimed at empowering Nigerians with AI skills.
- In the first initiative, the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), a N100 million AI Fund backed by Google to support Nigerian startups that are leveraging AI to develop innovative solutions.
- The second initiative was a N2.8 billion support from Google to accelerate AI talent development across Nigeria.
- According to the Ministry, the support, which was provided as a grant from Google.org to Data Science Nigeria, would bolster its ongoing AI-driven initiatives to upskill youth and under- and unemployed Nigerians, with a focus on AI skill development and education.
What you should know
The Communications Ministry recently released the country’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy document, which is currently being reviewed by MDAs, following which it would be adopted as a national policy to guide all government efforts in Al.
- The government has also formed the Al Collective which will collaborate on research, projects of interest, hackathons, and seminars to develop an inclusive approach to Nigeria’s AI initiatives.
- Aside from the AI Strategy, the Nigerian government recently launched its Large Language Model, which is expected to position the country as an AI leader in Africa.
- According to the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, the LLM will be trained in 5 low-resource languages and accented English to ensure stronger language representation in existing datasets for the development of Artificial Intelligence solutions.
