Nigeria's AI Advantage
That title may be very surprising. Yes, it is indeed. But I can tell you that Nigeria has an advantage in the black world on the development of AI. Besides the technology, a key component will be data. Nigeria is the largest population in the black race, and naturally should supply the bulk of that data.
Technically, if we deepen our capabilities, Nigeria will be the ecosystem where the world of AI can understand the black world, from the African lens.
Of course, most of the data is not even under the control of Nigerians and Nigeria. Foreign companies are harvesting and curating them. That means that while we have the supply of the data, the monetisation will not be under our control. AI needs data to be better, and the more the better. Most times, the largest data set becomes the normal.
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I do believe that China will have an edge over U.S. in the AI consumer market with the massive datasets its population provides. The technology will attain equilibrium over time and the differentiated advantage will be the data: China has the edge.
The push by Facebook, Google and others into Nigeria could be designed to understand Africa by understanding Nigeria. In AI, data is critical. That gives Nigeria advantage for understanding Africa. But who controls the bank accounts, based on that understanding, is another question. It may not be a Nigerian; possibly Americans.
The question now is, does Nigeria even know where to start? If we can answer this question correctly, then we can do something.
