Bosun Tijani

"There is a long term initiative that we are currently working on, which aims to bridge the gap between city and rural area: the fiber fund. It is a $2 billion fund to expand our current backbone from 35,000 kilometers to 125,000 kilometers. In other words, we are investing in 90,000 kilometers of fiber optic network across the country."

"However, that is a long term initiative and it is not going to connect those people in the next year or two. We expect that such a project will probably take about three to five years to be completed."

"What we are doing in the meantime, however, is investing in what we have called the Broadband Alliance. The Broadband alliance is focused on enhancing the existing infrastructure that we have in the country, which is about 35,000 kilometers of optic fiber network. We have a government-owned satellite — the only one in the West African region — which allows us to connect difficult-to-reach locations. One of the projects we started in the first three months of our appointment was the deployment of connectivity to all local government secretariats across Nigeria — all 774 of them"

"We found the case of the Chinese farmers extremely inspiring because when people talk about connectivity, they talk about connecting people but it is somehow abstract or difficult to actually picture cases of how this investment in connectivity leads to important economic opportunities for individuals. In China, the government is ensuring that farmers in rural areas have access to quality connectivity solutions."

"We are still limited to connectivity between people, connecting people to people."

"We tend to forget that connectivity is also about connecting things to things, and people to things, and that is what is responsible for the prosperity that we are beginning to see in a number of sectors globally."

"When you look at the use of connected technologies in mining, it is saving lives: making mines a lot more precise in their daily operations, and helping miners to use resources more sustainably."

"If you look at what connectivity is doing in security, it allows to govern previously ungoverned spaces, it is even useful to manage forestry or farms."

"All these opportunities are limited for developing countries if we only focus on connecting people to people."

"I think we are forgetting opportunities that exist as well and are very important. *The next conversation that we need to be having is about the link between connectivity and prosperity in developing countries."

"Focusing on connecting people to others is not sufficient."

"Africa cannot remain as consumers, we need to grow into producers of solutions, “With the design lab, we are looking to deepen our work, to allow us support the smart application of technology especially for prosperity across multiple countries."

"Beyond just a tour, we want to build strong presence in the Bay Area."

"Our size will become a major part of us being able to invest in startups, and the longer we stay invested the more we will start to see significant returns and exits."

"Technology is becoming a major part of nearly all that we do as humans. We are beginning to see how it is facilitating access to services and increasing productivity: many businesses are now completely relying on it."

"Having an example of farmers being able to livestream their products and thus selling directly to consumers is very inspiring."

"We need to do a good job at investing in our infrastructure, to train more people to have a strong workforce and to have a decent set of policies for the digital economy. Otherwise, there is going to be a limit to how much gains we can get out of all the investments that we have made."

"Within the community, we want people to be able to work together and generate new knowledge — whether on the application of AI in critical sectors or for critical services in Nigeria."

"Most of the time, civil society organizations tend to narrowly focus on policing the government. However, the digital economy is so robust that the people we need to police are beyond the government — as most of the time the government does not have the capability to use technology."

"A lot of the young people are digital natives and of course you still find a lot of vulnerable young people, but the slightly older folks are the ones who are the most vulnerable."

"To sum it up: in the North, people are scared of losing their jobs because of AI. In our case, we are creating more jobs with it."

"When people have a clearer understanding of artificial intelligence, they can better protect themselves instead of relying on laws to do so alone — laws must be there to support it, but individuals must also be well educated about this phenomenon."