The question, therefore, is not whether girls will benefit from AI. It is whether they will help design the systems that govern it.
Across Africa, the stakes are uniquely high. The continent has the world’s youngest population, with over 60 per cent under the age of 25. At the same time, it faces some of the deepest structural inequities in health access, education continuity, and digital inclusion.
According to the International Telecommunication Union, nearly 90 per cent of adolescent girls and young women in low-income countries remain offline. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women are 30 to 40 per cent less likely than men to use mobile internet, limiting access not simply to information, but to opportunity itself.
In Nigeria and across the continent, these disparities are not abstract. They are lived realities. Girls are more likely to experience interrupted education, less likely to access digital devices and structured STEM pathways, and more exposed to health vulnerabilities that directly affect learning and productivity.
And still, within these same constraints lies extraordinary potential.
In communities across Nigeria and Africa, girls are already thinking like systems designers. They are often the first to notice when a newborn’s condition changes but care is delayed. They know what it means to miss school because menstrual health needs are unmet. They observe inefficiencies in clinics, classrooms, and communities long before they are captured in reports or dashboards.
These are not merely experiences. They are data points for innovation.
The future of AI in Africa will not be built only in laboratories or global technology hubs. It will be built from lived realities translated into intelligent systems.
Dear Girls, I want to pause here and speak directly to you.
Some of the most important solutions begin with what you notice every day: a question you ask in the classroom, a challenge you observe at home, a gap you see in your community. What may seem like an ordinary observation today could become tomorrow’s breakthrough in healthcare, education, or social protection.
Your curiosity matters.
The way you notice what others overlook matters. The questions you carry are often the first steps toward systems change.
At the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, this intersection between lived realities and intelligent systems is already visible. Through Project Oscar – Light For Life, over 8,300 newborns were screened for jaundice in 2025, achieving a 98 per cent treatment success rate and helping to prevent avoidable brain injury and long-term disability. In partnership with Picterus Newborn Health, frontline health workers are using Picterus® Jaundice Pro, a smartphone-based tool powered by machine learning to enable early detection.
What this means in practice is simple but profound: a nurse in a primary health facility identifies risk earlier, makes faster evidence-based decisions, and helps save a newborn’s life.
This is artificial intelligence, not as abstraction, but as equity in action. And it points to a deeper truth: the future of AI in Africa must be built around solving African problems accurately, inclusively, and at scale. Globally, many AI systems have been developed without adequate representation of African contexts. In healthcare, this has real consequences. Diagnostic tools that are not calibrated across diverse skin tones or environmental conditions risk producing biased or inaccurate outcomes.
Without intentional inclusion, systems may fail the very populations that need them most. Inequities may be digitised and scaled. Entire communities may remain invisible in data-driven decision-making. This is why representation is not symbolic. It is structural.
Dear Girls, you must move from users to builders. You are not only meant to use technology. You are meant to shape it.
A curiosity in biology can lead to breakthroughs in maternal and newborn health. A strength in mathematics can power diagnostic algorithms. A sensitivity to inequality can produce systems that are fair, inclusive, and just.
This transition, from user to builder, requires systems that support it: education systems that keep girls in school, digital access that is affordable and reliable, mentorship that bridges aspiration and opportunity, and policies that prioritise inclusion rather than assumption. If Africa is to fully realise the promise of AI for development, three shifts are non-negotiable. Digital inclusion must be treated as a development priority. Girls’ education must be protected and extended. Innovation must be locally grounded, with African-led solutions funded, scaled, and integrated into national systems.
At WBFA, our work across maternal health, WASH, adolescent wellbeing, and health systems strengthening reflects one enduring principle: you cannot build a digital future on an unequal foundation. Health enables education. Education enables participation. Participation enables innovation. This is how systems change.
And so, to every girl reading this across Nigeria and the African continent, know this: the future is already forming in the questions you ask, the problems you notice, and the courage with which you imagine something better.
Our shared responsibility is to ensure that when the future is built, girls are not written into it as beneficiaries, but recognised as architects.