From Palm Oil to Personal Data: Nigeria’s Journey from Colonial Exploitation to AI Colonialism

Nigeria’s story has always had a familiar rhythm: someone else maps the territory, names the resources, builds the pipelines, and sets the rules—while Nigerians pay the costs and receive a fraction of the value. Colonialism extracted land and crops. Neo-colonialism extracted oil and policy leverage. Now AI risks extracting something even more intimate: our data, our labour, and our right to shape technology on Nigerian terms. This is already visible in identity systems, cloud dependency, predatory algorithmic lending, outsourced “ghost work”, imported surveillance, and language erasure. AI colonialism is not coming. It’s here—and it’s evolving.

Colonial Nigeria was engineered for extraction: rail lines to ports, cash crops to foreign markets, and administrative systems designed to control—not empower. Neo-colonialism modernised the same pattern: oil revenues flowing outward through multinational supply chains and imported expertise, while Nigeria carried pollution, volatility, and weakened institutions.

AI colonialism is the next phase—less visible, more scalable, and powered by data, compute, and standards. In Nigeria today, it shows up in five concrete places:

1) The Biometric State as a Foreign “Stack”
Nigeria’s identity ecosystem (NIN and related verification rails) is a national asset—yet critical biometric capacity has repeatedly depended on foreign vendors and proprietary systems. For example, NIMC’s upgraded biometric matching infrastructure has been publicly tied to IDEMIA (a French technology company primarily owned by the US-based private equity firm Advent International) through renewed collaboration and system upgrades.

When core identity infrastructure is externally supplied, Nigeria risks long-term lock-in: pricey upgrades, opaque technical choices, and sovereignty questions about who ultimately controls the most sensitive dataset in the country.

2) Cloud Dependency as a New “Toll Gate”
Nigeria can now use AWS Local Zones in Lagos for certain low-latency/local processing needs—but this is not the same as having full national control of hyperscale cloud infrastructure.

For startups and even government projects, the default is still renting compute from foreign platforms whose pricing, governance, and outage economics Nigeria doesn’t control. That’s the digital version of paying tariffs on your own trade routes.

3) “Your Phone Is the Collateral”: Algorithmic Lending & Data Extraction
A very Nigerian expression of AI colonialism is the rise of app-based lending that historically relied on invasive access (contacts, call logs, photos) and opaque scoring models. Regulators have been forced into repeated crackdowns and investigations into online lending privacy violations.

The underlying dynamic is unchanged by new rules: while Nigerians' data is the essential raw material, the opaque scoring methods conceal how the resulting economic damage (debt traps, exclusion, and harassment) is exclusively borne by the local population.

4) Nigeria as “Ghost Work” Labour Pool—Disposable and Unprotected
Nigerians are already part of the invisible workforce that trains AI: tagging images, evaluating responses, moderating content—often through platforms that can cut off entire countries without explanation. A major report documented Nigerians being booted from Remotasks (a Scale AI platform based in the United States) alongside other countries.

And the human cost is real: Nigerian activist Kauna Malgwi’s story links directly to outsourced content moderation trauma and the fight for labour rights.

This is classic extraction logic: low bargaining power, weak protections, and minimal value retained.

5) Epistemic Violence: “Global” AI that Doesn’t Speak Nigeria
When AI tools fail in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or Nigerian Pidgin—or misunderstand local context—Nigeria is pressured to adapt to the model rather than the model adapting to Nigeria. The response is telling: local initiatives like Awarri’s language data collection and Nigeria-backed model efforts exist precisely because mainstream systems don’t adequately represent Nigerian realities.

Yes, Nigeria now has stronger legal framing for privacy via the Nigeria Data Protection Act and an empowered commission—but enforcement capacity, procurement discipline, and technical sovereignty are still catching up.

This is why the problem continues: the mechanisms for extraction are actively being established through new contracts, data acquisitions, and technical interfaces.

Nigeria doesn’t need to “reject” global AI—it needs to stop being reduced to a raw-material zone for it. Demand data residency and audit rights in public contracts. Fund Nigerian language datasets and open evaluation benchmarks. Require algorithmic transparency for digital lenders and high-impact systems. Build local compute capacity beyond token edge zones—through real incentives for Nigerian data centres, research clouds, and model-hosting. Protect gig workers with enforceable standards and mental-health safeguards. And above all: treat digital infrastructure like national infrastructure. Colonialism thrived on silence. AI colonialism thrives on terms and conditions that nobody reads.