The Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, has said that Nigeria, the African continent will integrate AI into solving real-world challenges in every economic sector, thereby leapfrogging development gaps.
Inuwa stated this during a panel session tagged “Harnessing AI for Strategic Leadership”, at the Main State of the GITEX Africa 2025 held in Marrakech, Morocco, as he envisioned the Africa’s AI future in the next 5 years.
According to the DG, by augmenting human capability with AI, the continent can unlock unprecedented levels of innovation, efficiency, and inclusive growth.
“We missed the first, second, and third industrial revolutions, but this fourth one, we must lead it and not just follow.” He said.
Speaking on the aim of the panel session, which seeks to explore how data-driven and intelligence-led strategies can transform business models, optimise resources, and unlock new opportunities through AI-powered processes across various nations.
Inuwa explained that harnessing AI, technology would redefine leadership business, organisational, and operational models towards unlocking new opportunities.
This is as he stated that AI technology will position Africa, particularly Nigeria, as a rising force in the global AI landscape, championing a people-first and strategy-led approach to AI development and governance.
“To be effective in today’s dynamic environment, leaders must evolve into AI-driven leaders and leverage technology not just as a tool but as a partner in decision-making.
“AI is shifting the skills we value today, as well as the processes we use to do our daily work, so to drive strategic leadership, you need to be an AI-driven leader and find a way to use AI as a tool to create co-intelligence whereby you bring people and computers to work together to deliver your strategic vision as a leader,” he noted.
Inuwa, urged leaders to combine AI with the unique strengths of their teams to deliver real business value, noting that strategy must always come first, adopting a mindset of continuous improvement.
He explained that AI is invited to the table by giving it a role in organisational tasks, maintaining human oversight to correct bias and misjudgment, designing guardrails to ensure privacy ethics, and inclusivity, and adopting a mindset of continuous improvement by treating today’s AI as the least capable version that can be used.
He, however, warned against the risks of deploying AI systems built on data that fails to represent the diverse realities of global societies. Stressing the need for digital visibility of all cultures and citizens, he cautioned that if data doesn’t see a community, the system won’t see it either.
The DG introduced NITDA’s approach to governance in regulating AI through the Regulatory Intelligence Framework that is anchored on the 3 pillars of awareness, intelligence, and dynamism.
” In our approach to regulating AI in governance, we have a framework we call Regulatory Intelligence Framework, which as a regulator we need to be aware of the environment, we need to be dynamic because things change, and we also need to be intelligent. We need to know the data and make sense out of it.
“Then we have two approaches, the first one is a rule-based where you can come up with certain guidelines and expect people to comply with them and we have a non-rule based, which allows them to build use cases, and based on those use cases, put the guard rails and agree on the best practices, which is always the best when it comes to AI governance,” he explained.
Other industry leaders who shared their experiences and insightful ideas at the panel session were the Special Envoy on Technology, Republic of Kenya, Philip Thigo, CEO Pesalink, Gituku Kirika, and the Head of Africa, Open AI, Emmanuel Lubanzadio.