HARNESSING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

SD: Sustainable Development

AI- Artificial Intelligence

ChatGPT – Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer

IoT – Internet of Things

UN- United Nations

WHO- World Health Organization 

WEF - World Economic Fund

NCAIR - National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

NITDA - National Information Technology Development Agency

FMCIDE – Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy

UN’s SDGs- United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals

MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology

USMLE – United States Medical Licensing Examination

NAIS – Nigeria’s National AI Strategy is a document containing comprehensive policies and action plans to achieve the vision ‘to be a global leader in harnessing the transformative power of AI’ through responsible, ethical, and inclusive innovation, fostering sustainable development through collaborative efforts.

ABSTRACT

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a globally sought-after technological advancement in the 21st century because of the significant contributions it is estimated to make to the world’s economy. AI’s applications in robotics, smart assistants, chatbots, disease detection systems, and whatnot make it pivotal technology in the achievement of a plethora of Sustainable Developments (SD) in Nigeria; from eliminating poverty, protecting the environment, improving health and education, to reducing inequality while fostering economic growth and encouraging peaceful, just, and inclusive societies. However, AI’s adoption and integration pose various challenges and risks in low-middle-income countries that must be managed. This essay discusses how Nigeria can harness the power of AI to achieve its SD. A holistic framework analyzing and discussing the links between AI technology and Nigeria’s sustainable development is proposed. The framework illustrates how AI-powered solutions would assist in achieving sustainable development in Nigeria, further drawing lessons from global best practices of AI applications. Specific areas where AI can have a significant impact are discussed, including healthcare, education, agriculture, and energy. The essay also addresses the challenges Nigeria faces in integrating AI for sustainable development and recommends strategies to ensure its effective and beneficial integration into society.

Keywords: Sustainable Development, Artificial Intelligence, technology

1.     INTRODUCTION

The world as you knew it is not the same today and as you know it will not be the same in future because of Artificial Intelligence. Since its ideation in 1950 by Alan Turing, AI has evolved and advanced through historical events (figure 1) like Google Med-PaLM 2 AI which outperforms doctors in medical diagnosis, prognosis, and drug prescription after passing USMLE exam with a 67.6 % expert-level-accuracy in 2012; or the milestone achievement in 2016 by AlphaGo Google DeepMind AI, winning against a world top-ranking champion in the board game Go (Deepmind nd).

AI is the science of making machines that can think like humans and augment human capability and efficiency in various tasks. These machines are programmed with databases, algorithms, machine and deep learning properties— learning by a deep network of artificial neurons from trial and error, repetitive reward and punishment, and perception of the environment or experience— that enable them to intelligently perform human tasks (Robert 2018).

The AI revolution is underway globally as tech innovations continue to rapidly evolve and permeate various aspects of daily life. Framed as a development imperative, this essay underscores the importance and transformative opportunity AI presents for Nigeria to effectively harness AI and foster economic growth and SD in Nigeria.

2.     STATUS QUO OF AI IN NIGERIA

Nigeria’s tech and AI industry are under the jurisdiction of the Federal Ministry of Communications Innovation and Digital Economy (FMCIDE) and facilitated by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR). Centred in major cities like Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s tech economy is characteristic of suboptimal mobile penetration rates and AI hubs-- Lagos’s Yaba district (Silicon Lagoon) being the epicentre for a growing number of AI-focused startups (Obi 2020).

Nigeria’s endowment with a demographic dividend characterized by a youthful populace and abundant natural resources creates room for potential economic transformation with AI. With a population exceeding 200 million, Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and the seventh globally. It stands as one of the world’s fastest-growing nations, ranked 27th currently and projected to rise to the 20th position by 2030. However, with approximately 40% of the population living in poverty and over 50% of the youth unemployed or underemployed, Nigeria faces daunting development challenges. The nation grapples with poor health and education indices, inadequate power and physical infrastructure, and general insecurity, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

AI applications offer great opportunities for Nigeria to leapfrog development, creating new industries and jobs for a more prosperous society. However, current development policies and strategies in Nigeria do not recognize the importance of AI technology in the context of SD (Palomares et al 2021).

3.     CHALLENGES OF AI ADOPTION IN NIGERIA

Despite the potential benefits of AI, its adoption in Nigeria is hampered by various challenges encompassing technological, skill, regulatory, economic, and cultural barriers:

Technological Barriers: These include limited internet access, inadequate digital infrastructure, and high costs of AI implementation (Gwagwa 2021). With only 46 per cent of the population having internet access, Nigeria ranks low in global broadband connectivity. Investments in internet connectivity are often concentrated in urban areas, leaving rural areas underserved.

Skill Gaps: Nigeria’s budgetary allocation for education, set at 5.6 per cent of total expenditure, is among the lowest globally. Consequently, a major obstacle to AI adoption in Nigeria is a shortage of AI experts in academia and industry. Many practitioners in data science and machine learning either lack formal AI education or the best brains are lost to brain drain. While several initiatives exist, these programs are often inaccessible to many young Nigerians due to factors such as eligibility requirements, costs, and inadequate internet access.

Economic Constraints: Inadequate funding is stifling innovation in Nigeria’s AI industry. AI research and development efforts largely rely on grants from international NGOs, foundations, and government entities primarily based in the global north. This limits local innovation and the ability to create a robust AI ecosystem within Nigeria, hindering progress and exacerbating the skills gap necessary for effective AI deployment.

Cultural and Social Factors: Public scepticism about emerging technologies, compounded by religious concerns, poses hurdles to the adoption of AI-driven solutions in agriculture. Currently, AI-driven solutions are viewed as “unnatural” and face resistance from key stakeholders, including farmers, cooperatives, and associations.

Urban-Rural Migration and Division: Possessing better infrastructure and educational opportunities, urban areas in Nigeria adopt and integrate AI faster than rural areas. This further widens the gap between urban and rural regions in terms of job opportunities and economic development. Lagos, for example, is the hotspot of AI research and advancement in Nigeria and thus the most populated state. With a potential population increase to 24.4 million people by 2035 and double by 2050 (Population Stat 2024), Lagos is predicted to be one of the top three most populated cities in the world because of the constant immigration to Lagos from the North and other rural parts of Nigeria.

Regulatory Issues: Other impediments include the absence of comprehensive AI policies and regulatory frameworks to guide the ethical usage of AI.

Nigeria is a daily occurrence that is generating acute human capital deficit in the industry.

Will AI displace or Empower the Nigerian workforce?

Prior to the advent of AI, former technological developments, industrial robots and mechanization could automate and thus replace repetitive manual jobs like packaging/assembly tasks at factories and other low-and-middle-skilled occupations (Ezebunwa 2024).

According to Mihaylov’s and Tijdens’s (2019) theory about routine theoretically programmable and non-routine work, only highly skilled white-collar workers can perform non-routine cognitive jobs which call for dexterity, inventiveness, and social intelligence. However, current developments in AI have disproved this claim by performing a wide range of complex intellectual tasks from formulating medical prognoses and spotting fraud, to writing research papers. Unlike earlier waves of automation, AI is predicted to displace more white-collar jobs than blue-collar jobs (Lan et al.). The World Economic Fund (WEF) predicts about 85 million jobs worldwide will be replaced by AI in 2025, complementing PwC’s claim that about 35% of jobs will be lost to AI.  McKinsey brings it home, estimating up to 60% of all jobs/tasks in Nigeria are at risk of being automated in the next decade. According to the Nigerian Communications Commission, AI-powered automation has led to a decrease in demand for basic administrative and customer service workers, with a reported 15% reduction in available jobs in these categories: writers, salespeople, manufacturing jobs, warehouse workers, coal miners, accountants, bookkeepers, and research analyst (Todolí-Signes 2017). The Job displacement effect following every new technological invention is inevitable and will only worsen as older technology and the jobs dependent on them are replaced (Lan et al. 2022).

Global Economic Division:

“The future has already arrived; it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

–      William Gibson

In the large scheme of things, the beneficiaries of the emergence of AI are developed High-Income Countries (HICs) as opposed to Low-Income Countries (LMICs) countries at the low end of the wealth ranking.

Many might argue AI is more likely to be a global economic equalizer as much as the internet has been a force of globalization empowering societies across all stages of development. In our increasingly AI-driven world, however, rich countries with abundant AI resources— big data and skill sets, state-of-the-art scientific and technological facilities, and computing power— dominate the industry, establishing an irrefutable hierarchy that leaves LMICs with the shorter end of the stick. LMICs continue to lag on the trajectory and benefits of AI innovations driving the 4th industrial revolution, and their locals and workforce are more predisposed to lose their jobs to new waves of technological innovations.

4.     SOLUTIONS AND POLICY STRATEGIES

While Nigeria has successfully drafted policies in her National AI Strategy (figure 2) outlining plans to establish a regulatory framework for emerging technologies and ensuring responsible and ethical AI development in the country (NCAIR 2024), such efforts are still in their infancy. 

Figure 2: Nigeria's NAIS- vision, goals, and outcomes 

Source: NCAIR

Emphasis should be placed on the implementation of these policies to ensure that AI adoption in Nigeria prioritizes data privacy, AI ethics, and inclusivity, to resolve top ethical and social issues like bias, privacy invasion, and job displacement stirring concern and opposition to AI development.

Secondly, to harness the potential of AI for achieving SD in Nigeria, Infrastructure Development is critical: investing in robust digital infrastructure, ensuring high-speed internet access in urban and rural areas, establishing internet access centres, and developing data centres to enhance Nigeria’s AI research capabilities. There should be adequate capacity building and establishment of AI-focused training centres and research institutions across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones, providing accessible AI literacy programs and fostering partnerships between academia, the private sector, and international organizations for technology transfer and shared research insights.

Additionally, Public Awareness Campaigns should be launched to educate the Nigerian public about the benefits of AI in sectors like agriculture, education, and healthcare, dispelling misconceptions about job losses due to AI integration.

Finally, funding and partnerships should be encouraged by creating an enabling environment for private-sector investments in AI technology and establishing partnerships with global tech companies willing to invest in local AI research initiatives.

5.     APPLICATIONS OF AI FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

AI adoption could accelerate the achievement of certain UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) tailored to Nigeria’s context, particularly in critical areas like zero poverty (SDG 1), zero hunger (SDG 2), good health and well-being (SDG 3), quality education (SDG 4), affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), and economic growth (SDG 8):

Economic Development: The World Economic Fund (WEF) predicts more than 97 million new jobs will be created globally by 2025 as the “rise of machines” transforms existing roles and creates new ones. According to the UN’s estimation, achieving the SDGs in Africa would open $12 trillion in market opportunities and 380 million jobs by 2030 (NCAIR 2024). Nigeria’s tech ecosystem is potentially one of the fastest growing in the world, capable of supporting 488,000 jobs and contributing approximately $1.5 billion to the economy. Nigeria’s adoption of AI could enhance its global competitiveness. Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product is the largest in Africa, and adopting AI could position the country as an African innovation hub for emerging technologies and attract investments.

Bridging the Doctor-to-Patient Ratio: The boundless possibilities with AI in the Nigerian health sector— from identifying diseases and offering better treatments, automating manual tasks, remote patient care, telehealth services to medical surveillance, predictive analysis, and epidemiological research— would resolve the disproportional doctor-patient in Nigeria. Telemedicine can connect patients and healthcare providers through audio or video calls, allowing healthcare access without travelling long distances (Etori 2023).

Personalizing Education: Nigeria can advance the state of education and address historical problems like the low teacher or guardian counsellor-to-student ratio in educational institutions by simulating and developing free online curricular education for primary, secondary, and tertiary education levels. Upgrading this platform with customized AI learning software like Khan academy will give Nigerian students access to the best AI personal tutor tailored to their academic preferences, weaknesses, and strengths and every teacher the best AI teaching assistant to reduce administrative burden (Sal Khan TED 2023).

In Nigeria, the agricultural sector is critical for national development, poverty reduction, and food security. However, challenges such as land degradation, soil depletion, climate change, water depletion, pest infestation, and inadequate access to markets hinder growth. By overcoming these challenges, AI can help Nigeria’s agricultural sector progress, ensuring food security and maximizing land potential.

 Remote sensing technology can monitor vegetation health, precision farming, and soil moisture, while machine learning algorithms can estimate crop yield based on historical and current data. Mobile apps can provide farmers with weather forecasts, pest control advice, and best planting times.

Lastly, AI can radically change the national defence in Nigeria, with possibilities not limited to:

•       Advanced cybersecurity technologies and training in cyber warfare techniques capable of protecting infrastructure and countering cyber threats.

•       Drone technology like the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for surveillance and targeted strikes.

•       Sophisticated radar systems aid in the detection and tracking of enemy aircraft and vessels.

•       The application of AI in automating tasks, logistics management, threat analysis, and tactical planning.

•       And the application of robotics and autonomous systems to reduce human risk and carry out complex military tasks like bomb disposal, surveillance, and reconnaissance (Idoko, 2023).

Embracing and Leveraging AI: As the old saying goes 'to whom much is given, much is expected’, it is expected of workers to stay abreast of the latest AI development, identify ways to integrate AI into career opportunities within organisations, capitalize on AI-augmented employees’ capabilities, and maximize the privileges from AI-driven innovation, efficiency, and competitive advantage. According to the WEF, AI would create new forms of entrepreneurship and 97 million jobs including AI engineering, machine learning engineering, data scientist, computer vision engineer, natural language processing engineer, deep learning engineer, AI research scientist, AI product manager, etc. These new roles require specialized skills in digital literacy, data analysis, and AI-related technologies, thus, the need for workers to reskill and upskill. We should change our mindset of scarcity and practice of criticizing and negatively probing tech innovations like AI to a growth mindset by acquiring the flexibility, adaptability, regulations, and safe policies needed to adapt and integrate AI into our lives.

6.     INSIGHTS FROM GLOBAL BEST PRACTICES AND MODEL

On the one hand, a case study of China’s state-run artificial intelligence programme reveals the fundamental roles and collaborative efforts of the Chinese government and tech companies— Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu among the top ten global firms valued at over $400 billion— in investing and developing China’s tech industry, making China a world-leader across major technology categories (Robert 2018).

Leading the forefront of research in AI and seconded only by China, USA on the other hand is globally recognized as the base for research, invention, intellectual and scholarship pursuit in renowned institutions like Harvard and Princeton Universities, and MIT. The workforce produced by these academic institutions populates tech giants like Tesla, Google, Facebook, and Amazon that are behind pioneering AI inventions like ChatGPT (3, 4, 5), Apple intelligence, Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, Deepfake, Khanmigo, self-driving cars and whatnot that pervade the military, educational, socio-economic and political sectors in the United States (Aschenbrenner 2024). 

These case studies expose how the interaction and collaboration of stakeholders across the public and private sectors— the government, research and academic institutions, tech companies/startups/innovation hubs and research universities— collectively contribute to the growth of the country’s AI ecosystem and economic development. Adopting a similar collaborative approach to Nigeria’s AI ecosystem cannot be overemphasized. It demands all hands on deck especially the conscientiousness of the Nigerian government to invest in the sector and address internal challenges like corruption that continues to discourage local or foreign investors.

Nigeria’s element in the global technological competition and prospects of matching world powers in the race for the Internet of Things (IoT) is the FMCIDE strategic plan (figure 3) put forward in 2023 as a roadmap towards stemming the tide of the AI revolution.

Figure 3:

A_Strategic_Plan_for_the_Federal_Ministry_of_Communications_Innovation_&_Digital_Economy

Source: FMCIDE; Author’s Schematization

If these policies can strictly be executed and followed through by 2030, the Nigerian AI industry, according to NCAIR (2024), is poised for substantial growth with a projected $434.4 million by 2026 and a compound annual growth rate of 44.2%. AI will sweep radical growth and development through every sector of the Nigerian economy and create at least 50,000 jobs (FMCIDE 2023).

7.     CONCLUSION

AI has a transformative potential for Nigeria to drive economic growth and sustainable development. However, significant challenges hinder AI adoption, including technological limitations, skill gaps, and regulatory barriers. This essay proposes solutions focused on infrastructure development, public awareness, and fostering partnerships to create a conducive environment for AI innovation in Nigeria. By embracing AI's applications in key sectors such as healthcare, education, and agriculture, Nigeria can enhance its global competitiveness. With the strategic implementation of policies, the country stands to benefit immensely, ultimately positioning itself as a leader in the African tech landscape.

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