Founding father of STEM-A-Faculty and Product Hub Africa (PHA), Victoria Oladosu, has emphasised the pressing want for Nigeria to speed up tech talent growth in response to the worldwide rise of synthetic intelligence (AI).
This, she stated, might be essential to realizing the expectation of AI boosting the nation’s GDP.
A latest Public First report on Nigeria’s AI potential estimates that AI may add $15 billion to the nation’s GDP by 2030.
Talking on the 2025 STEM Convention held at Nile College, Abuja, Oladosu stated Africa’s competitiveness within the rising AI-driven financial system hinges on how rapidly it could possibly equip its younger inhabitants with core STEM (Science, Know-how, Engineering, and Arithmetic) capabilities.
“STEM is the distinction between the place we’re in Africa and the place we need to be. “We nonetheless want attorneys and docs, however extra younger folks should discover core STEM paths if Nigeria gained’t be left behind within the world AI race,” she acknowledged.
Connecting college students with rising applied sciences
The convention, which introduced collectively robotics, aerospace, and AI specialists, aimed to attach college students with the frontier of rising applied sciences and encourage a brand new era of innovators.
- Oladosu stated her startup is concentrated on nurturing tech expertise from an early age, notably by means of the STEM-A-Faculty initiative, which has reached each tertiary and pre-tertiary establishments throughout the nation.
- To this point, the initiative has upskilled over 3,000 college students in vital STEM disciplines, a transfer Oladosu sees as foundational to nationwide {economic} progress.
- Oladosu believes step one in attaining the nation’s targets in AI lies in training.
“We now have so many unskilled younger folks in Nigeria, and getting them into STEM must be a precedence,” she stated.
AI and financial system
Echoing this sentiment, Dean of the College of Computing at Nile College, Dr. Joshua Abah, highlighted AI’s potential to drive {economic} effectivity.
“What AI does is enhance productiveness and effectivity,” he defined, calling for stronger academic-industry collaboration to spice up innovation.
The convention additionally featured requires Nigeria to take a management position in Africa’s transition into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, leveraging its massive and youthful inhabitants to drive innovation throughout sectors.
What it’s best to know
Nigeria’s demographic benefit, with its median age at 18, has been cited as a possible catalyst for AI adoption.
Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Financial system, Bosun Tijani, has additionally confused the significance of investing on this inhabitants.
- Underneath the nation’s draft Nationwide AI Technique, Nigeria plans to equip 70% of its youth aged 16 to 35 with AI-relevant expertise, aiming to cut back unemployment by 5 proportion factors.
- As of Q3 2023, Nigeria’s unemployment price stood at 5%, in line with the Nationwide Bureau of Statistics, with simply 7.7% of jobs coming from the formal sector.
- The technique doc notes that constructing a extremely expert AI workforce is crucial to making sure significant job creation and sustaining long-term {economic} development.