Transcript
Bosun Tejani (0:00)
Foreign.
Katherine Chaney (0:07)
Of the defining forces of our time. It's reshaping how money flows, how services reach people, and who holds power. I'm Katherine Chaney, senior editor for special coverage at devex, and this is Global Progress in the AI Era, a special edition podcast series exploring what happens when AI collides with the world's biggest challenges. In each episode, we speak to leaders from philanthropy, government, civil society, and the private sector who are responding to this technological turning point. They'll break down how AI could unlock breakthroughs in health, agriculture, and education, and what it will take to avoid the risks of deepening inequality. We'll tackle difficult questions and spotlight promising ideas that will determine whether AI accelerates global progress or leaves more people behind. Welcome to this live recording of Global Progress in the AI Era. The AI story is not just a technology story. It's an economic story, a geopolitical story, and a story about power ownership and agency. And I'm especially excited for this conversation because we are joined by two leaders who are actively working to ensure that as this story unfolds, it does not leave entire countries and regions on the sidelines. Kate Callow, founder and CEO of Amini, is building sovereign data infrastructure across the African continent and the global South. And Bosun Tejani, Nigeria's Minister of communications, Innovation and Digital economy, is leading the country's national AI strategy and influencing much of the African tech ecosystem through his work on digital policy and infrastructure. Both of our guests have been named among times 100 most influential people in AI. And I actually want to start by sharing something that Kate shared on stage when she accepted a TIME 100 impact award. You said something that really stuck with me, and I mentioned to Kate, I want this to be the focus of our conversation. So you said sovereignty and equity will not be achieved through grand gestures, but through thousands of small choices. Which systems we buy, which skills we invest in, which data we choose to protect, which voices we insist on bringing into the room. And whether in moments of fear or convenience, we trade away our people's agency or defend it. So that is exactly what I want to focus on, the future. This story is being written based on small choices. What are those choices? What are the stakes? Why do they matter? Let's start with that. I want to hear when it comes to those choices, what are the problems that each of you are working to solve? And how does that play out in terms of choices near your day to day? And we'll start with you, Kate.
Kate Callow (2:46)
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. When it comes to the choices and how they relate to the problems we're trying to solve at Amini, we really trying to give governments and all countries a different perspective and a different way of doing AI. I think for the past few years the conversation has been highly dominated by large language models versus small language models or building gigawatt fast factories. But not a lot of the conversation has really been around. Okay, how do we look at building purpose built, contextualized and localized AI infrastructure? What does that mean? How do we unpack this for governments, for our ecosystems? What are the choices that governments are supposed to make and how do we make sure that when they are faced with the choice, they understand the risks and the opportunities on both sides? So a lot of the work we've been doing at Amini has been really helping governments unpack that and also giving them a different way of doing AI. It can be modular, it can be local, it can be small and can be big. But this is all that governments have to choose today. And I think we really at an inflection point when we think about sovereign AI, we always define sovereignty by choice and agency. So which choice? When you think about choice, where is your data being processed and stored? Which type of data center or compute infrastructure are you even building? Do you want to have data residency and keep your data closer to you, or do you want to be able to use public cloud? There are implications in each of those choices, but really it's about where will value be generated. Is it within your economy or is it outside and who will benefit from it. And this for me is the bigger framing when we think about sovereign AI.
