*As OADC, Analytics Intelligence deal, media’s Big Tech battle fuel push for homegrown AI
By Prince Osuagwu
Nigeria’s dream of achieving artificial intelligence AI sovereignty may have received an unexpected boost from Anambra State, where the state’s ICT Agency has begun deploying a locally trained AI system to automate government operations and explore new ways of improving productivity, governance and revenue collection.
While Anambra’s initiative is not a frontier AI model capable of competing with the likes of ChatGPT or Google Gemini, its significance is that it demonstrates that Nigeria does not necessarily have to wait for global technology giants before it can begin building AI systems around its own data, institutions and peculiar needs.
And that could become increasingly important as Nigeria steps up its quest for digital independence.
The development comes almost simultaneously with a partnership between Open Access Data Centres (OADC), a WIOCC Group company, and Analytics Intelligence, AI to develop sovereign AI and cloud solutions that will enable African businesses to deploy secure, scalable and locally hosted AI infrastructure.
The agreement is designed to combine Analytics Intelligence’s enterprise AI and data analytics capabilities with OADC’s network of data centres, keeping sensitive data within local jurisdictions.
Put the two developments together, it creates a bigger picture that Nigeria’s AI sovereignty conversation is slowly moving from policy speeches to actual infrastructure and applications.
For Anambra, the laboratory is government itself.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Anambra State ICT Agency, Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata, disclosed the initiative during a virtual interaction with journalists, recently, explaining that the Agency had entered a new phase of digital transformation following his reappointment by Governor Chukwuma Soludo.
He said that rather than attempt the prohibitively expensive task of building a frontier large language model from scratch, the Agency adopted an open-source model, modified it and began training it for specific applications.
“We have started doing our own local AI system. It is an open-source system, so we didn’t build our own frontier model. We basically looked at open source and modified it, and we are training it.”
That approach may prove to be one of the more realistic routes for governments and businesses in developing economies. AI sovereignty does not necessarily mean every country must build a model from zero. It can also mean having the infrastructure, data, skills and capacity to adapt AI to local circumstances while retaining control over sensitive information and critical applications.
Agbata said Anambra had already moved from experimentation to deployment, with the system being used to automate the Agency’s internal processes.
“We have used it to automate our agency end-to-end. Everything that we do now is currently automated,” he said.
According to Agbata, the bigger ambition, however, is to take the lesson beyond the ICT Agency. The Agency is examining how the technology can be deployed across government, particularly in areas where AI could improve productivity, strengthen governance and help tackle revenue leakages.
That revenue angle could ultimately prove to be one of the most consequential applications.
For a state like Anambra, where government services, taxation, licensing, records and other administrative activities generate enormous volumes of data, the ability to deploy locally adapted AI could help government process information faster, identify gaps and make better use of its resources.
It is also a significant departure from the old perception of AI as merely a chatbot or a fancy productivity tool. In Anambra’s case, AI is being positioned as part of the machinery of government.
Agbata described the initiative as a key component of the Agency’s 2.0 phase, following his reappointment.
He recalled that Governor Soludo had asked him what would be different in his second tenure, for which his answer, was to consolidate the Agency’s achievements in infrastructure, capacity development, e-governance and smart government while introducing a stronger AI dimension to development.
He linked the Agency’s recognition at the National Council on Innovation and Digital Economy to its work in smart government, saying the experience had strengthened the Agency’s resolve to use technology to solve practical problems.
The new objective, he said, is “how we drive development, leveraging AI and other infrastructure.”
Nigeria media and AI battle with big techs
For Nigeria’s media industry, developments such as Anambra’s local AI project may carry an additional significance.
The country’s media organisations are currently engaged in an increasingly important battle with global technology platforms over the value, ownership and commercial use of locally produced content.
In July, President Bola Tinubu directed the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to investigate Meta, Alphabet/Google, X and certain generative AI platforms following a joint petition by the Nigerian Press Organisation, comprising the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria, Nigeria Union of Journalists, Nigerian Guild of Editors, Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria and Guild of Corporate Online Publishers.
Among the issues raised are alleged anti-competitive practices, the commercial use of Nigerian news content without fair compensation, the extraction or ingestion of copyrighted journalistic material and the use of publishers’ work in training generative AI systems. The FCCPC stressed that the investigation does not presume wrongdoing.
The dispute is not peculiar to Nigeria.
AI media war around the world
Around the world, publishers, authors, artists and other content creators are increasingly challenging technology companies over how their intellectual property is used to build AI systems.
In the United States, publishers and creators have taken several AI companies to court over alleged unauthorised use of copyrighted works. The litigation has already produced major settlements and rulings, including the $1.5 billion settlement involving Anthropic and authors whose works were allegedly used in training.
In France, the press is also pushing back against Google’s AI-generated summaries, with a major press association recently asking the competition regulator to intervene. The publishers argue that AI summaries can deprive news organisations of the web traffic on which their advertising and subscription businesses depend.
That global struggle is beginning to look particularly relevant to Nigeria.
If AI systems increasingly sit between news producers and audiences, whoever controls the models, data centres, algorithms and distribution platforms will wield enormous influence over what information people see—and who makes money from it.
A recent experimental study also found that AI-integrated search can reduce referrals to publishers, highlighting the potential economic consequences for media organisations whose journalism supplies the information consumed by AI systems.
This is where Anambra’s experiment could become more than a state government technology project.
The emergence of locally trained AI, locally hosted infrastructure and indigenous digital platforms could give Nigerian institutions more leverage in negotiating with global technology companies.
For the media, that could mean moving beyond the argument that Nigerian publishers must simply accept whatever terms are dictated by the dominant platforms.
Instead, the industry could increasingly begin asking a more fundamental question: What if Nigeria builds enough of its own digital infrastructure to determine how its content is processed, distributed and monetised?
Lekeleke joins the sovereignty conversation
The emergence of LekeeLekee, the African-owned social media platform unveiled by media entrepreneur, Prince Nduka Obaigbena, fits into this broader conversation.
Obaigbena had argued that the dominance of social media by American and Chinese technology companies required Africa to build its own alternatives, while also warning that the continent must develop its own technology and algorithms to influence how media is distributed in an AI-dominated future.
LekeeLekee is not itself an AI sovereignty project, but its underlying philosophy is relevant: local ownership of digital platforms matters when technology becomes the infrastructure through which society communicates, does business and consumes information.
That philosophy, combined with OADC’s push for locally hosted sovereign AI infrastructure and Anambra’s attempt to train and deploy AI for government operations, points to a potentially important Nigerian technology trajectory.
The pieces are still scattered.
Nigeria needs much more computing capacity, reliable electricity, local datasets, skilled AI engineers, research institutions, indigenous applications and stronger data-governance frameworks before it can claim anything close to full AI sovereignty.
But sovereignty rarely arrives in one dramatic leap.
It is built piece by piece.
A state government automating its operations with a locally adapted AI model is one piece. A data-centre operator providing infrastructure for locally hosted AI is another. Indigenous platforms such as LekeeLekee represent yet another.
And for Nigeria’s media organisations currently locked in a battle with global technology giants over the ownership and commercial value of their content, these developments could provide something even more valuable than technology: bargaining power.
For Agbata, however, the immediate task remains proving that AI can make government work better.
He said the Agency’s focus would remain on using technology to drive development, rather than pursuing AI simply because it is fashionable.
The message is increasingly clear: Nigeria may not need to build the next ChatGPT tomorrow to begin its journey to AI sovereignty.
It may only need to start building and controlling the AI systems that understand, and serve Nigeria first.
The post Anambra’s local AI raises Nigeria’s digital sovereignty hopes appeared first on Vanguard News.