Africa must own its digital future or risk exploitation, says Luminate CEO

Nigeria is losing millions annually due to its reliance on cloud infrastructure owned by foreign big tech companies, according to Melanie Hui, CEO of Luminate. At the Build 2026 Conference in Abuja, Hui warned Africa risks being locked into a subordinate role in the global AI economy unless it secures genuine ownership of the infrastructure powering the technology.

Hui urged stakeholders to question infrastructure control, value capture, and the power dynamics when digital systems fail to serve the public good. She pointed out that undersea fibre-optic cables carrying Africa's internet traffic follow historical trade and extraction routes, emphasizing that infrastructure determines who connects to whom and who controls the value.

With core components of the AI value chain concentrated in foreign markets, African nations remain dependent on foreign providers. Hui cautioned against confusing data centre hosting with sovereign control, emphasizing that the control of AI infrastructure lies with those who control it, can afford to use it, power it, and whose data it processes.

She also highlighted concerns about language representation in AI platforms and rejected claims that regulatory frameworks stifle innovation, citing societal harms like algorithmic bias and flawed identity-verification deployments. Hui called on philanthropic foundations to support researchers, civil society, and labor movements to build long-term ecosystem capacity and ensure an AI economy rooted in African agency and imagination.