At NITRA ICT Growth Conference 4.0, Prof. Obadare Highlights Critical Role Of Cybersecurity In Nigeria’s AI-Driven Digital Growth
By Kingsley I. Ilechukwu, Bureau Chief, South West, Nigeria
Founder and CVO of Digital Encode, Prof. Obadare Peter Adewale represented by CISO and Group Head of InfoSec & GRC Advisory, Oluwakayode O. Olatunji has emphasized the need for Nigeria to understand the threat landscape and the critical role of cybersecurity in protecting against these threats saying this is essential for driving sub-sectoral digital growth through Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In his presentation at the one-day ICT Growth Conference organized by the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA) at the Citi Height Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, south west, Nigeria, he noted that many African countries lagged behind in cybersecurity arguing that even in Nigeria, the financial sector had been at the forefront of leveraging AI and cybersecurity, contributing about 25 per cent-30 per cent of AI involvement based on local statistics.
Prof. Obadare highlighted the potential of AI across various sectors, including finance, health, energy, transportation, defense, medical, and agriculture. He underscored AI’s ability to predict productivity and its diverse benefits but quickly cautioned against the dangers of AI misuse, stemming from issues such as bias and fairness, inadequate transparency, security vulnerabilities, data privacy concerns, and ethical and moral dilemmas.
The cybersecurity expert discussed the use of AI in threat landscape profiling, crime detection and prevention, and reporting capabilities. He stressed the importance of responsible AI usage and the need for continued investment in AI and cybersecurity.
Identifying AI Governance, Architecture, Implementation, Operations, and Monitoring (GAIOM) as key elements for effective cybersecurity strategies in responsible AI development, he emphasized the importance of AI architecture, including business and data architecture, technology-infrastructure architecture and the necessity of a security architecture which included cybersecurity and data privacy protection respectively.
According to Obadare, data protection and privacy were crucial components of AI implementation saying the process of implementing AI, from setting goals to security monitoring, was vital adding the role of education and investment in education for driving AI adoption and economic growth could not be overemphasized.
To fully realize the impact of AI on national development, he advocated for explicitly defined governance objectives, an AI ethical framework, an interdisciplinary approach, robust local content data management, all-inclusive regulatory compliance, tailored best practice risk assessment and mitigation, transparency and explainability, sustained human capacity development, and robust processes to address AI implementation challenges. He also argued that monitoring AI usage and ensuring its alignment with set goals during the implementation process was critical.
In addition, he called for increased public sector and government investment in education to drive AI adoption and economic growth, noting that the role of education in providing the necessary skills and knowledge for AI implementation could not be ignored.
He introduced the concept of “knowledge banking,” where knowledge could be monetized to address various economic sectors and pointed out that in countries using AI to drive their economies, education was a fundamental prerequisite, and positively disruptive education led to the needed transformation by developing tailored skill sets.
“When we examine this, it becomes evident that many challenges we face in this part of the world will become easier to address. As a country, we have the potential to be a leading light in the knowledge economy because Nigeria is blessed with brilliant men and women,” he said.
Prof. Obadare, who was recently appointed a Professor of Practice by MIVA Open University, Abuja, also proposed a disruption of the educational sector to improve data quality. He emphasized that relying too heavily on outsourced data libraries could lead to AI biases and stressed the importance of maintaining excellent data quality as a local content treasure.
“To address this, we need to disrupt the educational sector, particularly from primary to tertiary institutions, to focus more on institutional or research-based education. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the global data was sourced from Johns Hopkins Hospital research center, indicating the importance of local research centers.
“We should encourage partnerships with the private and public sectors to create local content hubs, which would attract global tech companies like Meta and Google to invest in our ingenuity. Our tertiary education sector should be research-oriented and local content-focused to improve data quality and upskill the workforce, adapting to the challenge of training AI rather than traditional skills,” he concluded.
