The new passport (Part 2): Who gets left behind?

The most dangerous aspect of a technological revolution is rarely the technology itself. It is the illusion that access to that technology will remain permanent.

For much of the past three decades, countries such as Nigeria have operated within a world whose underlying architecture appeared remarkably stable. The most advanced technologies were usually developed elsewhere, but they eventually became available everywhere. Whether one lived in London or Lagos, New York or Nairobi, the broad direction of travel was the same. The frontier moved forward, and the rest of the world gradually followed.

This arrangement was never perfectly equitable. Wealthier nations gained access earlier. Richer institutions enjoyed better infrastructure. Stronger economies captured more value. Yet the basic assumption endured: participation was possible. The emerging age of artificial intelligence threatens to challenge that assumption.

The first article in this series explored the growing possibility that advanced AI systems may increasingly be treated as strategic assets rather than ordinary commercial products. If that trend continues, the implications for countries such as Nigeria may prove profound. Because the question confronting much of the developing world is no longer simply whether artificial intelligence will transform society. The question is whether they will possess meaningful control over the intelligence that increasingly shapes their future.

This is not merely a technology story. It is a development story. It is an economic story. It is a governance story. Above all, it is a capacity story.

For decades, development debates revolved around familiar variables: capital, infrastructure, education, governance, industrialisation, trade, and institutions. These factors remain enormously important. Yet artificial intelligence introduces a new layer into the equation. Intelligence itself is becoming a factor of production.

Historically, economic growth required combinations of labour, capital, land, energy, and technology. Increasingly, it also requires access to machine cognition.

A modern company equipped with advanced AI can perform tasks previously requiring far larger workforces. A government agency can analyse data more effectively. Artificial intelligence acts as a force multiplier across virtually every domain of human activity. This is why the emerging debate about access matters so much.

If intelligence becomes infrastructure, then access to intelligence becomes a developmental variable. And that reality presents uncomfortable questions for Nigeria.

The country enters the AI era from a position that is both promising and precarious. It possesses one of the continent’s most dynamic technology ecosystems. Nigerian entrepreneurs have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to adapt global technologies to local realities. Nigerian engineers work for global firms. Nigerian startups attract international capital. Nigerian professionals increasingly participate in global knowledge markets.

In many respects, artificial intelligence should amplify these advantages. Yet there is another side to the story. Nigeria remains overwhelmingly a consumer rather than a producer of frontier technologies. The servers are elsewhere. The chips are elsewhere.

The foundational models are elsewhere. The cloud infrastructure is elsewhere. The largest AI research laboratories are elsewhere.

The strategic decisions governing access are elsewhere.

This reality is not unique to Nigeria. It characterises much of the developing world. But the implications become more significant as artificial intelligence moves closer to the centre of economic life. The danger is not simply technological dependence. The danger is developmental dependence.

For generations, economists have studied the consequences of commodity dependence. Countries reliant upon exporting raw materials often find themselves vulnerable to decisions made in distant markets. The prices are set elsewhere. The rules are determined elsewhere. The leverage resides elsewhere. A similar dynamic may emerge around intelligence.

Imagine a future in which advanced AI systems become deeply integrated into education, healthcare, finance, manufacturing, logistics, and governance. Now imagine that access to those systems remains controlled by a handful of foreign companies operating under the jurisdiction of a small number of governments. The resulting asymmetry would be extraordinary.

Entire societies could become dependent upon cognitive infrastructure they neither own nor control. This possibility introduces a new dimension into the concept of sovereignty.

Traditionally, sovereignty referred to territorial authority. Governments controlled borders, laws, and institutions within defined geographic boundaries. The digital age complicated this picture. What does sovereignty mean when critical cognitive infrastructure resides outside national control? What does autonomy mean when key economic functions depend upon systems governed elsewhere?

These questions are likely to become increasingly important during the coming decades. Indeed, they may become central.

The countries most likely to prosper in the twenty-first century will not necessarily be those with the largest populations or the greatest natural resources. They will be those capable of integrating intelligence into their economic systems most effectively.

This observation carries particular significance for Nigeria. For years, the country’s development debate has focused heavily on physical infrastructure. Yet the emerging economy will require another layer of infrastructure: intelligence infrastructure. This includes data centres, research institutions, regulatory capability; and perhaps most importantly, institutions capable of understanding and governing technological complexity.

In other words, the AI revolution is ultimately another state-capacity challenge. Countries do not become competitive simply because technologies exist. They become competitive because they develop the institutions capable of absorbing, adapting, and deploying those technologies effectively.

History offers countless examples. The steam engine transformed some societies more than others. Electricity transformed some societies more than others. The internet transformed some societies more than others. The difference rarely lay in the technology itself. It lay in institutional capability. Artificial intelligence will be no different.

The determinant of national success may not be whether a country develops its own frontier AI model. Very few countries will.

The more important question is whether a country possesses the capacity to harness intelligence effectively.

This distinction matters because discussions of AI often drift toward unrealistic ambitions. Not every nation will become an AI superpower. Not every nation will build the next OpenAI, Anthropic, or DeepMind. That should not be the objective. The objective should be intelligent adoption.

The countries that prosper will be those capable of integrating AI into education, healthcare, agriculture, public administration, manufacturing, logistics, and entrepreneurship more effectively than their peers.

The challenge for Nigeria is therefore broader than technology policy. It concerns the architecture of national capability itself. Can universities produce the required talent? Can regulators understand emerging risks? Can businesses and public institutions adapt quickly enough and prepare future workers? Can infrastructure support increasingly digital economic activity? Can the state coordinate complex technological transitions?

These are fundamentally questions of capacity. Yet the implications extend even further. Artificial intelligence will reshape the global labour market in ways that are particularly significant for countries with large youth populations such as Nigeria. It can become an opportunity or a vulnerability.

The traditional development pathway relied heavily upon labour-intensive growth. AI introduces uncertainty into that equation. If machine intelligence performs an increasing share of cognitive work, countries may find themselves competing not only against other workers but against increasingly capable systems.

This does not necessarily imply mass unemployment. But it does suggest that competitiveness will increasingly depend upon the quality of human capital and the ability to work alongside intelligent systems.

The future workforce will emphasise different skills such as creativity, systems thinking and the ability to leverage intelligence rather than merely consume it. This transformation places enormous pressure on educational systems already struggling to meet existing demands. It also raises a broader question about Africa’s position within the emerging global order.

For centuries, the continent’s relationship with major technological revolutions has been characterised by delayed participation.

Artificial intelligence creates an opportunity to alter that pattern.

But opportunities do not automatically become outcomes. They require institutions capable of recognising and acting upon them.

This is why the emerging age of intelligence nationalism should concern policymakers far beyond technology ministries. It is not simply a matter of innovation policy. It is a matter of national strategy.

The countries that understand this will prosper, while others will increasingly dependent upon systems they neither control nor influence. Ultimately, the debate surrounding artificial intelligence is about power itself because the distribution of intelligence will become the defining determinant of prosperity in this century.

But the defining challenge within this construct is not just artificial intelligence. It is capacity. The capacity to understand intelligence. The capacity to deploy it. The capacity to govern it. The capacity to build institutions capable of thriving within a world increasingly shaped by machine cognition.

The nations that succeed will not necessarily be those that create the most powerful AI systems. They will be those that develop the strongest systems for using them. And that may prove to be the most important lesson of all.

For the emerging world, the great divide of the future may not separate those who possess intelligence from those who do not. The real divide may separate those societies with the capacity to convert intelligence into national performance from those that merely consume it.

In that sense, the age of artificial intelligence may ultimately become another chapter in a much older story: the story of how nations transform capability into power. And for Nigeria, that story is only just beginning.

Dr Hani Okoroafor is a global informatics expert advising corporate boards across Europe, Africa, North America and the Middle East. He serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of BusinessDay. Reactions welcome at [email protected]