In October 2025, the University of Lagos announced a partnership with OpenAI to host Africa’s first OpenAI Academy. The academy is designed to provide AI learning and capacity building for students, researchers and professionals across the continent. This move aligns closely with Nigeria’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy which prioritises the development of local AI talent infrastructure and research capacity.

Complementary initiatives such as the AI scaling hub supported by the Gates Foundation signal a clear policy shift toward sustained investment in indigenous innovation. Nigeria’s AI ambition is grounded in context building systems that reflect local languages, culture and realities. Within this trajectory the OpenAI Academy at UNILAG and many other AI-Techy education should strengthen the national strategy by laying the groundwork for Nigerian and African engineers to design and deploy AI solutions for their own societies rather than remaining passive adopters of external technologies.

The question facing Nigerian policymakers is not whether to adopt AI. That ship has sailed. The question is whether we will build indigenous AI capacity or simply import systems designed elsewhere. And if we import, from whom? Many leading global AI systems provide valuable access to advanced capabilities but are typically optimized, governed, and economically anchored outside national jurisdictions. An alternative partnership model like the OpenAI/Unilag needs to emphasise in-country infrastructure, local data stewardship and sustained capacity transfer. Access to Generative AI tools is not enough, we need to assume control over AI datasets et al.

Right now, the global AI landscape is consolidating around two poles. American companies lead in frontier models. Chinese companies are expanding aggressively across Africa, bundling AI with infrastructure investment and offering terms that look attractive in the short run. Nigeria’s choices in the next few years will shape our technological dependence for decades. To what extent are we ready to devote resources to raising AI and Data Engineers capable of building African-centricAI models? To what extent are we organizing our data? Is Africa ready to host its own data? Are we ready to generate the size of electricity AI engineering and Data Engineering require? These fundamentals come to mind when considering the size of the young population and how these black brains have fed the international AI companies from their self-strive.

There is a third path, building sovereign AI capacity through strategic partnerships that preserve Nigerian agency.

I have been examining this challenge through my extended Harvardpolicy research work with Quantum Alliance, a Cambridge-based nonprofit working with Harvard faculty and students on deploying breakthrough technology in strategic industries. There I work alongside Ujjwal Kumar, the organization’s CEO and co-founder of Cognisee, a public benefit corporation building what they call “sovereign AI infrastructure.”

Kumar’s background spans international development and technology policy, including work with the UN FAO and affiliation with the German Federal Foreign Office. That experience shaped his view that smaller nations can engage with global technology powers without becoming dependent on them.

“Sovereignty does not mean isolation; it means having the capacity to make choices. Nigeria has assets that create leverage in mineral resources, a massive market, and a young population. The question is whether we use that leverage to build indigenous capacity or trade it away for short-term convenience.”, Kumar acknowledges.

Cognisee’s approach centres on what Kumar calls “artificial collective intelligence,” preserving and utilizing human expertise, particularly from communities whose knowledge never makes it into conventional AI training data. The insight is that AI systems reflect whoever built them. AI trained only on data from wealthy countries will encode assumptions that do not translate to Nigerian contexts. Building AI that works for Nigeria requires Nigerian knowledge at the foundation.

This matters beyond technology. Nigeria holds an estimated $700 billion in untapped critical minerals, including lithium and rare earth elements essential for batteries, electronics, and renewable energy systems. These minerals are at the heart of a global contest for supply chain control.

The countries that capture value from critical minerals will be those with technical capacity to process, refine, and integrate those minerals into finished products. AI-driven supply chain optimisation, resource mapping, and processing efficiency will determine who wins and who merely extracts.

Kumar and the team at Quantum Alliance work on exactly this intersection, connecting AI capabilities with critical minerals development through partnerships with Stanford’s Mineral-X program, Harvard’s Salata Institute, and allied nation governments working on supply chain security. The model offers lessons for Nigeria – build indigenous technical capacity, partner strategically, and ensure that value creation stays as close to home as possible.

What would a genuinely sovereign AI strategy look like for Nigeria?First, data infrastructure. Nigeria must invest in collecting, curating, and protecting Nigerian data. This means local cloud capacity, data governance frameworks that keep sensitive information within our jurisdiction, and incentives for Nigerian institutions to contribute to indigenous datasets.

Second, talent development. Nigeria produces world-class AI researchers. The Diaspora Connect platform launched alongside our National AI Strategy is a start. But we need structured pathways that connect Nigerian talent with real problems. Programs like Q Fellows, an initiative Kumar runs through Quantum Alliance that places students on strategic problem statements from corporations and governments, offer a model worth adapting for Nigerian institutions.

Third, strategic partnerships. Nigeria should engage with partners who offer technology transfer and capacity building, not just finished products. Allied nations working on supply chain diversification have strong incentives to develop processing capacity outside of China. Nigeria can position itself as a partner in that effort rather than a passive supplier of raw materials.

Fourth, regulatory clarity. Nigeria’s National Digital Economy and E-governance Bill and AI oversight proposals are moving in the right direction. The goal is to create an environment where Nigerian AI companies can compete globally while ensuring that foreign AI systems operating in Nigeria meet Nigerian standards.

The window for action is narrow. AI capabilities are advancing faster than policy can respond. Other African nations are moving quickly. Kenya is developing its own AI governance framework. South Africa is attracting AI infrastructure investment. Rwanda is positioning itself as a tech hub.

Nigeria has advantages these countries lack – scale, resources, and a massive domestic market. But advantages do not convert themselves into outcomes. That requires deliberate strategy and swift execution.

We have done this before. Nigeria’s telecommunications revolution in the early 2000s transformed our economy because we moved quickly and created space for indigenous players to grow. The AI revolution offers a similar opportunity, but only if we recognise that sovereignty is not given. It is built.

The convergence of national policy academic leadership and global partnerships signals a deliberate shift from consumption to creation anchoring AI development in local capacity relevance and ownership. By investing in talent infrastructure and context-driven innovation Nigeria is laying the foundation for an AI ecosystem that serves its people advances inclusive growth and positions the country as a credible contributor to Africa’s and the world’s AI future.

• Olanrewaju-Smart, Ph.D, is Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on Intergovernmental Affairs and Policy Fellow at Quantum Alliance, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.