Nigerians in the Age of AI
Originally published in The Yuan on March 15, 2023. Republished here by the author. Read the archived original.
With recent developments such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and other popular artificial intelligence (AI) tools like Lensa AI, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E that have recently made headlines, Nigerians are now more interested in AI than ever before.
AI - once just a buzzword confined to technology professionals and enthusiasts - is now a known concept for anyone who has a smartphone and internet access, thanks to the growing accessibility of digital tools. Nigerians currently hold a wide range of opinions on AI, ranging from skepticism, awe, and fear to overestimating its capabilities. Google recently released a search trend showing that Nigerians are increasingly interested in AI, which already has many well-known beneficial applications in society, and this article will look at how Nigerians take advantage of these new opportunities.
Current state of Nigeria's AI
AI in healthcare
Nigeria's National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD) has urged the country's health sector to adopt AI to enhance the delivery of healthcare. This led to the launch of NIPRD's AI laboratory, which is designed to support the development of interventions to improve healthcare practices and workflows. Health technology startups in the private sector, such as Ubenwa, also offer AI-powered software for the early identification of neurological and respiratory conditions in infants through cry analysis technology. Another startup, HelpMum, uses AI for vaccine intervention to tackle maternal and infant mortality. Startups like these are already making significant strides in the healthcare sector with their AI products.
Language preservation
AI is also making a difference in language preservation. Nigeria has over 250 languages, some of which may be lost in coming years due to factors such as inter-ethnic marriages. However, initiatives like Masakhane and Lanafrica, organizations which support natural language processing (NLP) research in African languages, are helping to conserve major languages, including Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. Meanwhile, platforms such as OBTranslate, which can translate over 2,000 African languages, are also helping to improve accessibility to African language tools and representation.
With more active individual involvement in the AI space, there could eventually be more representation of minor Nigerian languages as well, such as Abua, Ijaw, and Duguri, which would prove useful to Nigerians both within the country and in the diaspora.
There have also been notable individual efforts from Nigerian data scientists such as Wuraola Oyewusi, who explains technology concepts including AI in Yoruba, and researchers from InstaDeep who built pidgin-to-English translation models. Once there are more platforms like this, it will make text-to-speech synthesis, machine translation and other NLP models more readily available in several Nigerian languages. This could then be used to further improve the accuracy of speech recognition systems for Nigerian languages, making it easier for people to use voice commands in their native languages and offering a wide variety of customizable tools which will do a better job of preserving and promoting Nigerian dialects.
AI-generated art
Alongside popular search queries in Nigeria like 'what is AI?' another frequent search query on Google has been 'what is AI art?' and with good reason: There is a well-known Nigerian artist who has been able to use AI to envision a new life for elderly Africans through extremely realistic-looking photos and videos. His 'Elders Series' displays a catalog of pictures and videos of elderly men and women on a runway for a virtual Afrocentric fashion show. AI tools have also been used to generate images of what Nigeria might look like in the future.
Fintech
The most popular use case of AI in the industry has been its applications in financial technology. Nigeria's banks use AI chatbots like LEO, ADA and SAMI to help customers access banking services. Other uses of machine learning (ML) and data science involve the detection of fraud and anomalies, such as Fraudaeck (fraud analysis environment for cyber-fraud checking), an ML model developed to prevent cyber fraud in electronic banking transactions. As more roles related to data science and ML open up in the fintech industry, there will likely be more varying applications of AI.
Content creation
Nigerian content creators, copywriters and community managers have begun to embrace AI tools on a daily basis, using them to create content, improve on existing content, and prioritize more productive endeavors. These tools are not limited to ChatGPT, though it has become a favorite of many.
Opportunities for growth
Government initiatives: In 2020, the Nigerian government set up the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics to promote development of AI, robotics, drones, the Internet of Things, and other emerging technologies. Government initiatives like this are especially important to educate Nigerians about the relevance of AI and support the work of researchers.
Nigeria's AI policy
As of the time of writing, Nigeria's AI policy is still a work in progress, though for now the main intention is to encourage digital innovation and economic growth in the areas of AI and robotics. Over the long term, the ultimate aim of this is to encourage and facilitate research in these fields, build human capacity and skills, and promote the ethical and responsible deployment of AI technologies across the country.
AI education: With people's growing interest in AI, which is evident in the recent increase in related search queries and the increasing number of data science and AI-related organizations, communities, and educational opportunities, Nigerians are starting to gain a better understanding of the significance of AI, how it affects their daily lives, and innovative ways of integrating it into their careers and business operations.
Outlook for Nigerian AI
Nigeria's startup ecosystem is thriving, with numerous innovative companies dedicated to solving problems which are unique to Nigerians and many other Africans across a range of industries, including healthcare, agriculture, finance, and education.
Many of these companies are already using AI or seeking ways to integrate it to enhance their product offerings. Nigeria's AI sector is thus poised for continued growth and innovation in the years ahead.
