Nigeria’s National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), in collaboration with NITDA and the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, published the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (NAIS) in September 2025. The strategy organises Nigeria’s AI ambitions around five pillars: infrastructure, talent, adoption, ethics, and governance. It targets a USD 15 billion GDP contribution from AI by 2030. The talent pillar addresses curriculum integration, teacher professional development, and capacity-building across research institutions. The strategy also introduced the Nigerian Atlas for Languages and AI at Scale (N-ATLAS), an open-source multilingual large language model covering Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Nigerian-accented English, intended to lower barriers to AI access across Nigeria’s linguistic communities.
Who it affects: The strategy is addressed to government agencies, educational institutions, researchers, and private-sector actors across all sectors. The curriculum provisions concern schools and universities, while the capacity-building pillar targets researchers and public servants. N-ATLAS is designed to extend AI access to Nigerians who operate primarily in indigenous languages rather than English.
What is notably missing: The NAIS is a strategic document, not legislation. No binding obligations on schools to integrate AI into curricula, on employers to train staff, or on government departments to meet training standards. No enforcement mechanism is specified for any of the five pillars. Academic research cited in the strategy notes that teacher training needs, infrastructure gaps, and AI ethics instruction remain largely unaddressed. No dedicated funding stream is identified for the education and talent pillars.