Kayode Tokede

The Chief Executive Officer of Luminate, Melanie Hui, yesterday praised Nigeria as a leading example of how African countries can shape the global artificial intelligence economy rather than simply consume it. She pointed to the country’s regulators, workers and innovators as proof that the continent is already setting its own terms.

Hui gave the keynote address at the Build 2026 Conference in Abuja.

The audience included the Honourable Minister of Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy, heads of government parastatals, members of the diplomatic community and members of the Nigeria AI Collective. She said research Luminate commissioned this year on the continent’s AI landscape “found not only patterns of extraction and inequality. It found imagination and leadership.”

“Here, there are important reasons for optimism,” she said.

Hui cited the action Nigeria’s competition authority took against Meta over data exploitation and discriminatory practices. She said this showed that “global tech companies are not beyond the reach of national institutions.” She also praised app-based drivers in Nigeria for securing government recognition for Africa’s first e-hailing trade union.

She said innovators across Nigeria are “using locally built, practical technology to serve the underserved: from bringing reliable banking for rural communities to tackling massive crop losses.”

Her examples from elsewhere on the continent were litigation in Kenya establishing that global technology companies can be brought before Kenyan courts civil society coalitions in South Africa challenging bulk surveillance at the Constitutional Court AI-assisted learning materials in local languages helping children in Mali drones extending healthcare to remote islands in Uganda