By Aduragbemi Omiyale

Stakeholders in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) space in Nigeria will have the opportunity to meet others from across the world at an event planned for Thursday, June 226, 2025.

The event, organised by Vertiv, will showcase latest AI-ready infrastructure solutions, including key innovations in power and cooling.

The world leader in critical digital infrastructure is bringing company is bringing its highly anticipated AI Solutions Innovation Roadshow to Lagos as part of a global series of events designed to educate and equip customers and consultants with essential expertise for deploying high-performance computing (HPC) and AI infrastructure.

Vertiv experts will introduce the key infrastructure imperatives to enable AI, sharing insights on latest challenges and opportunities and providing participants with a deep understanding of the latest innovations supporting HPC infrastructure, as well as the impact on data centre power and cooling systems.

The Vertiv AI Solutions Innovation Roadshow in Lagos will explore opportunities in Africa’s AI data centre landscape and discuss the latest power and cooling innovations for the AI era.

It will examine how West African enterprises are preparing for AI’s infrastructure demands, addressing necessary policy shifts and strategies to future-proof digital infrastructure across industries.

This roadshow highlights key requirements for implementing AI-compatible infrastructure and services to maintain operational excellence.

Vertiv speakers for the Lagos event include Piorko; as well as Jon Abbott, technologies director, colocation and hyperscale for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA); Luther Ogbaji, sales engineer, high density and liquid cooling specialist; Sofiat Ojurongbe, regional account manager, and Okechi Osuagwu, key account sales manager.

The event will also comprise a panel discussion on ‘Building for Tomorrow: Preparing West Africa’s Infrastructure for AI at Scale’, which will feature panelists including Wole Abu, managing director for West Africa, at Equinix, and Gerald Madondo, country director at Turner & Townsend.

“This event series marks our dedication to actively support the data centre and AI market across Africa. With the incremental influence of AI and HPC on our industry, we understand the critical need to support our customers and partners with insights and technology that drive their success,” the Managing Director of Africa at Vertiv, Wojtek Piorko, stated.

A global technology company, Zoho, has launched Zia Hubs, a solution within Zoho WorkDrive that brings new forms of unstructured business data into the company’s broad portfolio of applications and AI services.

Using Zia Hubs, organisations can now present any type of business content to Zoho’s powerful capabilities and services—including agentic AI, comprehensive analysis, and accurate, unified search—regardless of file format or structure.

Zia Hubs brings content intelligence to the company’s unified content management and collaboration platform.

Designed with a high level of user control over what content AI is allowed to access, Zia Hubs enables users to organise project or task-specific content into dedicated hubs within WorkDrive.

Each hub serves as a focused space where Zia, Zoho’s flagship AI, can understand and act on the content stored within. This includes a wide range of formats such as PDFs, documents, videos, and audio files.

The platform automatically organises uploaded content by grouping related information—such as section headings, supporting text, and visuals—to preserve context. For video and audio files, Zia generates transcripts and links key moments to relevant topics, making it easier to pinpoint exactly where something was said.

With Zia Hubs, users can surface the most relevant answers when asked a question, even across different content formats. Each response includes clear citations that link back to the original content, whether it is a document, spreadsheet, image, or a specific moment in an audio or video file.

Organisations can also create custom workflows with Zoho Flow, automating document storage processes for particular projects or specific teams. This ensures that Zia always has access to the latest necessary documents automatically.

Furthermore, content from third-party software—such as Docusign PDFs, RingCentral call logs, Zoom video files—are all readable by Zia, and can be automatically placed into a hub by building a workflow with Zoho Flow.

Commenting on this, the Country Head of Zoho Nigeria, Mr Kehinde Ogundare, said, “According to IDC, 80 per cent of business data is unstructured.

“Most unstructured data is text-based, meaning pertinent information lives within email conversations, social media posts, word processor documents, or audio and video transcripts.

“With Zia Hubs built into the full product suite, Zoho can provide customers with a deeper integration than any comparable software platform and nearly limitless potential uses for their data.”

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

A leading telecommunications infrastructure provider, IHS Nigeria, has promised to support the country produce future unicorns.

The company gave this commitment at a virtual town hall session organized by the Ilorin Innovation Hub with the theme From Ilorin to the World: Building a Globally Recognized Technology Hub.

The Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of IHS Nigeria, Mr Kazeem Oladepo, said the Ilorin Innovation Hub would be transformed into a leading destination for talent and technology development across North-Central Nigeria.

“We see the Ilorin Innovation Hub as a platform to attract top talent—not just from Ilorin, but from across the region’s tertiary institutions and tech ecosystem.

“This is an opportunity to build globally impactful companies by harnessing local brilliance with global insight,” Mr Oladepo stated.

Responding to a participant’s question on how individuals could contribute towards the growth of the hub, he encouraged industry experts present to engage directly with the hub’s program managers – future Africa and Cc-Hub, provide mentorship, and help in aligning the training modules with local and global market realities.

“IHS is already investing financial, technical, and intellectual resources into the Hub. But to truly thrive, we need champions within the ecosystem—mentors who’ve built real businesses—to guide young people as they develop transformative ideas,” he noted.

He called for the inclusion of successful professionals and entrepreneurs in the platform’s activities to ensure relevance and adaptability.

“Let’s bring in those who’ve succeeded in fields like e-commerce, logistics, Healthtech, and Data Mining. Their insights can help refine the Hub’s programs and ensure participants extract real value,” Mr Oladepo stated.

Also, the chief executive of Ilorin Innovation Hub, Mr Temi Kolawole, described the town hall as a homecoming for top minds with roots in Kwara State.

“This is a convergence of visionaries—people who’ve built, scaled, and invested in world-class companies—now giving back to shape a collective future.

“Our partnership with IHS Nigeria exemplifies what’s possible when public sector ambition meets private sector expertise,” he noted.