Why Nigerian Climate AI Startups Cannot Innovate on Foreign Data and What Must Be Done About It.

This policy brief points to a gap in the Nigeria’s National AI Strategy, which is the limited availability of high-quality locally generated climate data. The brief notes that while startups are already building AI tools for areas such as agricultural resilience and energy forecasting, many are still forced to depend on datasets from outside the country.

It also acknowledges that the challenge is not only the absence of data but deeper institutional issues and to address these problems, it outlines four practical directions. These include the creation of a National Climate Data Commons to improve access to priority datasets, stronger requirements for public institutions to make data more transparent and usable, targeted funding to support local data collection and the adoption of common, machine-readable standards across agencies.

Together, these measures are intended to strengthen the data ecosystem, support local innovators and ensure that Nigeria’s climate-focused AI systems are built on relevant and reliable local information.