Webinar: Responsible AI in Nigerian public services
Online, 14 October 2026, 11:00 WAT. A ninety-minute discussion on what responsible use of data and machine learning should look like inside Nigerian ministries, and who gets to decide. Free, recorded, captioned.
On 14 October 2026 the Foundation is hosting a ninety-minute online discussion on what responsible use of data and machine learning should look like inside Nigerian ministries and agencies, and who should decide. The session is free, will be recorded, and will be captioned.
Why this conversation, now
Nigerian public bodies are adopting data tools faster than the frameworks that govern them are being written. Ministries are building dashboards, agencies are exploring automated eligibility checks, and vendors are arriving with machine learning products aimed at health, education and revenue.
Most of that is potentially useful. Some of it will make decisions about citizens that nobody can explain afterwards. The gap between those two outcomes is not mainly technical. It is a question of who was in the room when the system was specified, what the fallback is when the model is wrong, and whether the affected public ever finds out a model was involved.
That is what this session is about. It is not a product demonstration and there will be nothing to buy.
What we will cover
Four questions structure the discussion.
- Where does responsibility sit? When an automated system produces a wrong outcome for a citizen, who answers for it: the vendor, the agency, the officer who acted on it, or nobody.
- What does meaningful consultation look like? Communities are routinely described as stakeholders and rarely consulted before deployment. What would a real process cost and how long would it take.
- What should be published? Which parts of a public-sector model should be open by default: the data sources, the decision logic, the error rates, the review process.
- What is the fallback? Every automated system needs a human route for people it fails. Designing that route first tends to change the system.
Speakers
The panel brings together a senior officer from a state ministry, a researcher from a Nigerian university working on data governance, and a fellow from the Foundation’s AI for Public Good Fellowship who is currently embedded in a public agency. Names will be confirmed on this page nearer the date.
The format is short opening remarks from each speaker, then forty minutes of questions from attendees. We would rather run out of time on questions than on presentations.
Who it is for
Civil servants working with data or procuring digital systems, researchers, students, journalists covering technology policy, and anyone interested in how public data is used. No technical background is assumed and no technical vocabulary will be left unexplained.
If you work in an agency that is currently deciding whether to adopt one of these tools, you are exactly who this is for.
Practical details
The session runs for ninety minutes from 11:00 West Africa Time on 14 October 2026, online. Attendance is free. The recording and a written summary will be published on this page afterwards, so registering is worthwhile even if you cannot attend live.
Live captions will be provided. If you need anything else to take part, tell us when you register and we will arrange it.
Registration
Registration opens four weeks before the event and will be linked from this page. Questions for the panel can be submitted in advance through the contact form, and we will put as many as we can to the speakers.
