Nigeria’s AI pitch will be judged against Nairobi and the Cape

When the SGF talks about a $1 trillion African AI economy, he is not only talking to Nigerians. He is talking to a continent that has already built competing centres of gravity: Nairobi’s product culture, South Africa’s capital markets, Rwanda’s regulatory speed, Ghana’s quieter talent base.

Nigeria has the market size. It does not automatically have the stack. Engineers still leave for jobs that pay in dollars and keep the lights on. Startups that stay must price in generators as a line item. That is an industrial policy failure wearing the mask of a power-sector problem.

The useful comparison is not Silicon Valley. It is whether a Lagos founder and a Nairobi founder, given the same idea, would rather incorporate at home. On too many days the honest answer is neither — they will take Delaware and a cloud bill.

A continental race is not won with a target. It is won with cheap power, predictable tax, and a visa regime that lets a Cameroonian researcher land in Abuja without a month of paperwork. Those are unglamorous sentences. They are the whole game.