Somewhere in Mabushi, a crossroad area between the inner and outer districts of Abuja, Nigeria, Uniccon Group, a two-year-old Nigerian technology firm, has built a humanoid: a 6-foot-tall multilingual human-like robot called Omeife. From an idea that was conceptualised in 2020 to a back-and-forth construction--slow wins and quick-succession learning--that stretched across two years, Omeife, built as a female Igbo character that understands and speaks eight different languages, is now a product ready to meet the world. Powered by sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms developed in-house by the company's team of scientists, Omeife has a deep understanding of African culture and behavioural patterns. Speaking to TechCabal about the project over a call, Chuks Ekwueme, who founded the company in 2020 and serves as its CEO, revealed that the humanoid also has a real time understanding of its environment including active listening and the ability to focus on a specific conversation thread as it's happening. "It's not just multilingual, it has the ability to switch languages and interact with specific gestures--hand illustrations, smile and other bodily gestures--that match the tone of the conversation," said Ekwueme.

At a packed hall in Lagos, a gathering of education and technology enthusiasts cheered for a milestone moment: the launch of Nigeria's first book on artificial intelligence for primary and secondary schools. The eight-chapter book illustrated with animations is written by Olubayo Adekanmbi, convener of Data Science Nigeria (DSN). His organisation has taken an active role in democratizing artificial intelligence application and research in Nigeria. With a suite of hands-on training programmes, toolkits and events, Data Science Nigeria aims to increase Nigeria's presence on the global AI map. "AI is a catalyst for good that creates new frontiers," Adekanmbi said, in his remarks at the launch.

In Nigeria (and Africa), the proliferation of artificial intelligence is very much still in its infancy thanks to several problems ranging from a lack of adequate infrastructure to cultural and socio-economic barriers to adoption. But that doesn't mean Africa is taking a backseat and'unlooking'. As far back as 2008, South African company BrandsEye was already using a proprietary mix of search algorithms, crowdsourcing and machine learning to mine online conversations for sentiment and provide that data to enterprise customers. Also, Egyptian startup Affectiva, launched in 2009 by Rana El Kaliouby, uses emotion recognition to detect moods and make decisions based on facial expressions and has raised $34 million in venture capital till date. In Nigeria, the space is heating up, slowly but surely.