Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata (CFA)

Not every employee displaced by AI can become an entrepreneur. Running a business requires capital, customers, risk tolerance and skills that go far beyond using technology. We need to stop offering entrepreneurship as a universal solution to unemployment.

You can have a good business plan and still misunderstand your customers. I have seen projections where the numbers added up, but the plan assumed people would buy in ways they simply would not.

I disagree with the idea that AI makes education less important. It makes poor education harder to justify. If a student can get better explanations from a free AI tutor than from a classroom, we need to examine what that classroom is actually delivering.

Businesses won't stop automating jobs because employees are loyal or hardworking. If an AI system delivers comparable results at a fraction of the cost, competitors force everyone to reconsider their workforce. We need policies built around that economic reality.

The argument that AI always creates more jobs than it destroys relies heavily on what happened during previous technological revolutions. Those machines didn't keep learning to perform the new jobs humans moved into. That difference deserves more serious attention.

It's less comfortable for a profession built partly around charging high fees for specialised knowledge. Both things can be true.

AI could make an excellent lawyer's knowledge much cheaper to access. That's good news for people who cannot afford legal advice.

I disagree with the idea that AI makes education less important. It makes poor education harder to justify. If a student can get better explanations from a free AI tutor than from a classroom, we need to examine what that classroom is actually delivering.

There's a generation of young people taking on debt to acquire qualifications that employers increasingly expect AI to replicate. Universities need to rethink what they're teaching before students spend four years preparing for jobs that are disappearing

I'm not convinced by the promise of an AI economy where nobody needs to work until someone explains who owns the machines. If a few companies own the productive systems and everyone else depends on their generosity, that's not economic liberation.

Government agencies should not deploy AI simply because they want to appear innovative. If a system cannot demonstrate better service delivery, lower costs, or improved access, what exactly are taxpayers paying for? Technology adoption is not an achievement by itself.

If AI reduces the demand for labour, governments need something more serious than motivational speeches about adaptability. Telling displaced workers to become entrepreneurs is not an economic policy. Not everyone wants to run a business, and not everyone should have to.

Africa cannot keep celebrating every major AI breakthrough while doing almost nothing to build the infrastructure needed to benefit from it. Without reliable connectivity, computing resources and local talent, we'll remain customers in an economy other people are building.

The argument that America must rush AI development because China might get there first is dangerously incomplete. First to achieve what, exactly? If the technology becomes too powerful to control, winning the race doesn't automatically mean controlling the outcome.

I don't believe AI companies should be allowed to certify their own safety. You cannot have companies under pressure to release more powerful models also serving as the final judges of whether those models are safe. Independent testing should be a requirement, not a favour.

An AI system that works brilliantly in English but struggles with Igbo, Hausa or Yoruba is not equally useful to everyone. African language support cannot remain an afterthought. If we're serious about digital inclusion, we need to be part of how these systems are built.

I support open-source technology, but pretending that every AI capability should be freely downloadable and modifiable is irresponsible. There's a difference between opening up innovation and giving anyone unrestricted access to systems capable of sophisticated cyberattacks.

The idea that AI is only coming for repetitive jobs is irrelevant. Accounting, software dev, and customer service are all targets for automation. So the people telling graduates to simply learn another skill need to explain what happens when AI learns that skill too.

What exactly does the Anambra State ICT Agency do? 🤔 Let's take you a few steps behind the scenes, from MDA visits to the digital platforms supporting government services across Anambra State. Watch, learn something new and help us spread the word! 💙