Melanie Hui, Chief Executive Officer of the global philanthropic organization Luminate, has praised Nigeria as a leading global model for how African nations can actively shape the artificial intelligence economy rather than remaining passive consumers of foreign technology. ​
Delivering her keynote address at the Build 2026 Conference held in Abuja on Wednesday, Hui emphasized that the continent’s digital future hinges on establishing equitable ownership and governance over data, infrastructure, and human capital. ​
In her speech, titled “Africa in the Global AI Order: Towards Equitable Ownership and Shared Prosperity,” Hui cautioned against African nations being reduced to mere data sources or low-wage labor providers for foreign tech conglomerates.
She noted that recent research conducted by Luminate alongside the Global Centre on AI Governance revealed significant leadership, strategic vision, and proactive regulatory action across Africa, with Nigeria taking the vanguard. ​According to Hui, Nigeria’s progress rests on three distinct pillars of domestic empowerment: proactive regulatory oversight, organized labor, and grassroots innovation.
She pointed to decisive enforcement actions by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) against foreign tech giants as evidence that national regulatory bodies can hold global corporations accountable without stalling technical progress. ​
Beyond regulatory action, Hui highlighted the agency of Nigerian digital workers, citing app-based drivers who successfully established Africa’s first recognised e-hailing trade union to negotiate fair labor terms. She further commended local innovators for developing targeted technologies that solve pressing domestic issues, ranging from expanding rural financial access to reducing post-harvest agricultural waste.
​Despite these achievements, Hui warned that heavy reliance on foreign infrastructure poses a serious economic threat. Luminate’s research indicates that Nigeria’s dependence on external cloud service providers drains an estimated $850 million annually from the national economy in capital outflows. ​Hui stressed that establishing genuine sovereign AI requires far more than hosting foreign-owned server farms locally.
True digital sovereignty, she argued, depends fundamentally on who controls the underlying infrastructure, who can afford its services, what powers it, whose data it processes, and where the economic value ultimately flows. ​Addressing the ethics of technology, Hui urged leaders to move away from viewing personal data merely as a commodity.
Rejecting the common phrase “data is the new oil,” she emphasized that data represents human identity, relationships, and lived experiences, requiring governance grounded in human dignity, consent, and the public good. ​
The Build 2026 Conference was hosted in Abuja by the Nigeria AI Collective, a coalition comprising the Policy Innovation Centre, government representatives, academic researchers, and industry leaders working to advance domestic AI capabilities under Nigeria’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy.
