Megan Harper
Lagos, Dec 2, 2025 – The narrative for African enterprise has evolved. At the AI Forum Nigeria 2025, held at the Lagos Oriental Hotel, the consensus among decision-makers was clear: the era of “Digital Transformation” is over; the era of “AI-First Business” has begun.
The Big Picture: Organized by OLAK Events, the forum convened leaders from Microsoft, Rack Centre, and Zoho to dismantle the “pilot purgatory” many companies face. The keynote by Alaa Dalghan, CEO of Cognit DX, challenged Nigerian executives to stop treating AI as an experiment and start building enterprise-wide architectures that scale.
Key Takeaways:
- Infrastructure is King: Lars Christer Johannisson (CEO, Rack Centre) and Andie Oluwafemi Moyan (CEO, CitiData Centre) argued that AI ambition is dead on arrival without local cloud capacity. They emphasized that data integrity must come first—a sentiment mirroring the global shift towards profitability and governance seen at the concurrent AI Innovation Asia summit in Singapore.
- Local Cloud Power: As Rack Centre continues to expand its Tier III capacity, the forum highlighted that sovereignty over data infrastructure is becoming a prerequisite for Nigerian enterprise adoption.
- Democratizing Access: Kehinde Ogundare (Country Manager, Zoho) stressed that “AI First” isn’t just for heavyweights; SMEs can leapfrog competitors by adopting focused, strategic use cases now.
The Bottom Line: For investors and global partners, Nigeria’s commitment to foundational process redesign signals a market moving beyond hype toward operational AI maturity.
Strategic Partnerships: The forum was supported by key infrastructure players and global tech leaders, affirming the market’s confidence in Nigeria’s AI trajectory.
Official Partners: AIPressRoom joined Microsoft and Rack Centre in supporting the 2025 summit.
