October 21-22, 2026: Build 2026 conference on AI in Abuja, Nigeria

by Piyush Mathur

From October 21 to 22, 2026, Nigeria’s capital Abuja will host the Build 2026 conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI), focussing on the following theme: ‘Building Africa's Shared Compute and AI Infrastructure’.

Led by the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, the conference has been organised by the Nigeria AI Collective, which aspires to develop an ethical and inclusive AI ecosystem for Nigeria—in accordance with its National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (NAIS).

The Nigeria AI Collective is managed by Lagos Business School (LBS), Data Science Nigeria (DSN), the Centre for Journalism, Innovation and Development (CJID), and the Policy Innovation Centre (PIC), in strategic partnership with the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR).

The Collective is supported by the U.S.-based Luminate, Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and the Omidyar Group’s AI Collaborative.

Build 2026 will bring together a wide range of perspectives on the way forward for Nigeria in the AI sector. While the call for abstracts is closed already, one could still register to attend the conference via this link:

https://buildconference.ai/build-registration-your-interest/