Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, has said that the ministry, in its bid to make Nigeria a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI), has identified over 6,000 AI researchers who are of Nigerian descent and based in several parts of the world.
The Minister disclosed this at the Zenith Bank Tech Fair 2023 in Lagos, South-West Nigeria.
According to him, these researchers will be instrumental to the country’s new drive to deploy AI in every sector of the economy and for job creation.
He added that the goal of the ministry is to use AI to enhance productivity through the deployment of smart infrastructure.
The Minister had earlier in August, via a post on Twitter, asked Nigerians to recommend any AI researchers of Nigerian descent to join the country in co-creating a National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy.
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Explaining how the Ministry was able to identify the over 6,000 Nigerian AI researchers spread all over the globe, the Minister said:
“Since I’ve been in office, we’ve prioritized artificial intelligence and the first thing we did was to understand that we’ve not invested significantly in AI before. But we know for certain that there’s absolutely no top academic institution in the world where you don’t have a Nigerian so we give AI the assignments to help us find them. We downloaded all the academic publications on artificial intelligence in the world, of them.
“Then we use a library for Nigerian names to train the machine and say, sift through these thousands of publications and find names that look like Nigerian names. And were able to find over 6000 world-class researchers of Nigerian descent working in artificial intelligence.
“So, this has been the foundation for what we’re building, where we’re now reimagining the artificial intelligence strategy for Nigeria. We’re having clarity in terms of how this technology is going to help Nigeria to do better, but also how we have to protect Nigeria from the vices of AI. So that’s the first thing with it,” Tijani explained.
Highlighting other areas the government is driving the development of AI, the Ministry is building a global AI workforce for Nigeria.
The Minister said the Ministry is actively supporting any company that wants to prioritize creating AI jobs locally. He added the government would also be announcing 45 startups selected for empowerment under its AI Research Scheme before the end of this year.
The scheme plans to award N5 million each to 45 startups and researchers focusing on AI.
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