On August 2, 2024, the National Information Technology Development Agency's (NITDA) National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR) published the draft National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy 2024.

What were the highlights of the draft strategy?

The draft strategy analyzes the AI landscape in Nigeria, discussing its potential to catalyze socio-economic development yet highlighting its risks and challenges.

Furthermore, the draft strategy proposes risk mitigation strategies, including:

• areas of trade-offs where the Government has to balance competing interests - innovation versus regulation, the individual versus the state, and transparency versus system vulnerability; and
• mitigating AI risks by considering four factors - accuracy, bias, transparency, and governance.

The draft strategy follows 10 principles to achieve the national AI vision for 2024-2028, including responsible and ethical conduct, inclusivity and shared prosperity, innovation and adaptation, sustainability, collaboration, global leadership, transparency and accountability, being human-centric, risk management and resilience, and data ethics and agency.

In addition, the draft strategy sets out the strategic objectives for leveraging AI in Nigeria as a tool for economic growth and competitiveness, social development and inclusion, and technological advancement and leadership. It also lays out five pillars, each with objectives and actionable initiatives, including:

• building foundational AI infrastructure;
• building and sustaining a world-class AI ecosystem;
• accelerating AI adoption and sector transformation;
• ensuring responsible and ethical AI development; and
• developing a robust AI governance framework.

Moreover, the strategy also addresses how the U.S. National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) Framework for AI Risk Management can be a valuable tool for designing, developing, implementing, and using responsible AI systems. Consequently, the draft strategy evaluates how the NIST Framework may be applied in Nigeria by considering all the risk factors and potential outcomes.

You can read the draft strategy here.