The race to train one million Nigerians in Artificial Intelligence (AI) by Africa’s AI Hub, Kini AI, has kicked off at the University of Lagos.

Kini, derived from the Yoruba language of Nigeria, means “What”, embraces the essence of this word, sparking curiosity and providing answers to all things AI.

At the AI for Africa’s Education Summit organised by Kini AI in partnership with UNILAG (FABLAB), AI UNIPOD (UNILAG) and Lagos State Government Education (District 4), with the theme: ‘Teaching and Learning Responsibly in the AI Era’, gathered tech savvy, AI experts and enthusiasts, 30 schools with over 150 students, teachers, administrators, edtech professionals and others.

Rotimi Awaye who co-founded Kini AI alongside Osemudiamen Ehiabhi, said that Africa still has a long way to go to meet up to accelerate AI development across hardware, software, and model optimisation and more is needed to deploy advanced AI agents to design the next generation of AI systems.

Speaking, Awaye, said Kini AI has a vision of training one million Nigerians by 2030 through Project One Million.

“We are targeting four categories of people in Nigeria and Africa; one is education sector, small and medium sized businesses, women and people living with special needs to train them on response AI use.”

“We started with education; students and teachers. We kicked off with the Lagos State District 4 for the pilot phase and it was successful, reaching six schools, training 77 teachers and 300 students, understanding their needs so, as a result, we felt there’s need to guide people on responsible adoption of AI in the education sector and we came up with the summit.

When asked about the need to have summit on responsible AI use, he said: “We recognise that people are aware of what AI is, but unfortunately, there is no enough of people who rightly use it. Some time AI makes mistake and some time misdirect users and not everybody understands that so, we feel it’s necessary to guide people.

Speaking on level of adoption of AI in Africa, Awaye, who is also the Convener, AI for Africa Education Summit 2026, said: “Adoption is slow. One of the reasons is the need for at least a smart phone and that has created a gap. Students are finding their ways around AI even though there are limited resources. Awareness in term of knowing which one to use and when to use it is also a challenge.

Speaking also, John Adekanye, who led the students of Royalbliss School, Gbagada, to the summit, said: “I will implore schools and organisations to adopt AI; my first daughter read English Literally and study but found herself in tech and my last born is into website development and I am equipping myself with technology because I don’t want to be a burden to them.”