Experts Advocate For More AI Integration in Nigeria Non-Profit Sector

The 2024 Microsoft AI for Social Good Summit that was held Tuesday at Microsoft Office, Ikoyi, Lagos witnessed top stakeholders in the non-profit sector in Nigeria as they advocated for more leveraging of artificial intelligence in impacting lives for social good.

The event had in attendance Audrey Odogu, Philanthropies Team Lead, Microsoft Nigeria; Nonye Ujam, Government Affairs Lead, Microsoft Nigeria, Odunayo Sanya, Executive Director , MTN Foundation; Dr. Bayo Adekanmbi, CEO/Co-Founder of Data Science Nigeria; Dr. Oladipupo Sennaike, Lecturer at the Department of Computer Sciences, University of Lagos and Mr. Sunday Taiwo, GIEVA Head of ICT and Vice President.

While speaking at the event, Odunayo Sanya noted that despite a lot of efforts, training and projects put in place to impact lives and develop digital skills, there is still a lot to be done.

“There is a lot of training and upskilling, however, it is important that we continue. We need to structure our planning. For instance, every year for the past two years, we train around 8,000 young people. We need to come together and make an impact, and then it’s no longer about MTN Foundation, but a lot more about those young people we want to reach.. We also need to put a structure behind all we are doing as non-profit organizations, this will give intervention programmes a life of its own and it will attract its own resources.

“Nigeria is a nation of young people by demography. We need to get a digital skills curriculum into the classroom. We need to do things differently to get things done accordingly. Understanding the power of technological skills will help our young ones do things differently.“

Also speaking at the event, Dr. Adekanmbi, noted that “There is a need to train more talents for the future of our country. We also need to ensure that more non-profit organizations adopt the use of AI for humanitarian services.”

MTN Foundation is a corporate social investment trustee of MTN Nigeria.

Recently, MTN Foundation partnered with Microsoft and Meta to train young Nigerian entrepreneurs on ICT and business skills as part of its focus to help build sustainable businesses in Nigeria.