Nigeria’s AI Goal: Toriola Advocates Data Infrastructure, Power Investments

By Adedapo Adesanya

The chief executive of MTN Nigeria, Mr Karl Toriola, has said that Nigeria needs to invest in data infrastructure, power supply, and skills development to support the growth of Artificial Intelligence in the country.

This was part of assertions made as he presented his paper Toward a United AI Strategy for Africa at the ongoing 2025 Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX) on Tuesday in Abuja.

He called on the public and private sectors to collaborate with it to address the challenges and opportunities inherent in AI development in the country.

Mr Toriola said the country required patience and capacity to build and implement AI solutions to maximise its potential.

“I would love to see a headline that says Nigeria has articulated a clear strategy on how to advance artificial intelligence.

“I would like to read that it has harnessed the resources, both private and public, and is executing them with discipline and labour,” he said.

Mr Toriola said that Nigeria had faced a significant gap in data centre capacity, with an estimated 90-megawatt gap.

The MTN Nigeria CEO, who recently became the VP for Africa at MTN Group, identified the country’s poor power supply as a major challenge, adding that AI data centres required massive amounts of energy, equivalent to one nuclear power plant per data centre.

He advised that the country should build sovereign data ecosystems, adding that it will require computing infrastructure collectively.

“There is about a 90-megawatt gap in terms of data centre capacity today. It is estimated that data consumption from AI will be 16-fold of what we are consuming today,” he said.

According to him, “What we, as a nation, are going to try to do is to build sovereign data ecosystems, which requires computing infrastructure collectively. We do have some connectivity, but it is a long way to go.

“AI data centre that are being built today are of the scale that they need one nuclear power plant per data center. And that is where we have a huge gap,” he added.

According to him, MTN will continue to invest, execute and deliver solutions to consumers, Small, Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises that enable them to tap into AI opportunities.