Nigeria’s Bosun Tijani Joins ITU AI For Good Global Commission

Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, has been inaugurated as a founding member of the AI for Good Global Commission, a new international body created by the International Telecommunication Union to promote trusted and inclusive AI development.

The commission is co-chaired by Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Salesforce chair Marc Benioff, with ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin serving as vice-chair. The group brings together leaders from government, industry, academia and international organisations.

Tijani described the appointment as recognition of Nigeria’s progress in responsible and inclusive AI. For Nigeria, the bigger value is representation. Global AI rules are being shaped quickly, and emerging economies need a seat at the table before standards and infrastructure assumptions become fixed around richer markets.

TechBooky recently covered how Nigerian regulators are already reshaping digital infrastructure decisions. AI governance will likely follow a similar path, touching data access, cloud infrastructure, skills, public services and private-sector compliance.

AI policy is no longer a distant conversation for African governments. The technology is entering education, health, finance, agriculture, security, public administration and creative work. If African countries are absent from global rule-making, they may end up adopting frameworks designed for economies with very different infrastructure and labour markets.

Nigeria’s participation gives the country a chance to push issues that matter to emerging economies: local language inclusion, affordable compute, data governance, AI skills, digital public infrastructure and responsible deployment in sensitive sectors.

The appointment is symbolic, but the real test will be practical. Nigeria will need to connect global AI conversations with local execution, including talent development, research funding, startup support, clear regulation and public-sector use cases that actually improve services.

For Africa, the goal should not be to copy every AI policy debate from the US, Europe or China. It should be to shape AI around local development needs while still protecting rights, privacy and trust. Tijani’s seat on the commission gives Nigeria a louder voice in that conversation.