Summit 3.0 brought together over 30 speakers from banking, energy, telecommunications, government, and the private sector for a full-day conference on AI-driven transformation in Africa. The event had over 4,000 physical attendees and over 1,000+ people joined the summit online.
LAGOS, NIGERIA – 10th June 2026: Bluechip Technologies Limited, one of Africa’s leading enterprise technology and digital transformation companies, today hosted the third edition of the Bluechip Data and AI Summit at Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.
The Bluechip Data and AI Summit 3.0, themed “The Future, Now: AI-Driven Transformation for Africa,” convened senior executives, technology leaders, regulators, founders, and investors from across Africa and beyond for a full-day programme of keynotes, panel discussions, a fireside chat, and the live finale of the DSN x BCT LLM Agent Challenge, a hackathon co-hosted with Data Science Nigeria, with a prize pool of four million naira.
KEYNOTES FROM GOVERNMENT AND GLOBAL AI PRACTITIONERS
The summit opened with two keynote addresses that set the tone for the day’s conversations. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) ably represented by Dr. Aristotle Onumo, Director, Stakeholder Management and Partnership (SMP) Department, NITDA, delivered the government keynote, addressing Nigeria’s AI policy direction, the national digital agenda, and the regulatory frameworks being developed to govern AI adoption across the country.
Rosanne Werner, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of XCelerate IQ, delivered the international keynote, drawing on her global experience helping organisations move from AI strategy to practical implementation. Werner flew into Lagos from London specifically for the summit, underscoring the growing international recognition of Nigeria’s position in the African AI ecosystem.
A SPEAKER LINEUP SPANNING EVERY CRITICAL SECTOR
The summit’s speaker roster brought together over thirty professionals representing the full breadth of Nigeria’s digital economy. Confirmed speakers included:
- Kola Aina, Founding Partner, Ventures Platform Fund
- Victor Adewusi, Group Chief Data Officer, Access Holdings Plc
- Rachel Adeshina, Chief Information Officer, First Bank Group
- Bartholomew Okonkwo, Chief Information Officer, Fidelity Bank
- Bukola Ajayi, General Manager, IT Architecture and Engineering, MTN Nigeria
- Dr. Excel Theophilus Ukpohor, Manager, Digital and Innovation, Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG)
- Abdullahi Adamu, Director of Research and Data Analytics, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC)
- Osagie Imasuen, Head of IT, Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC)
- Abdul Jellil Yusuf, IT Strategy and Innovation Specialist, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
- Olumbe Akinkugbe, Executive Director, Digital Exploration and Technical Services, Galaxy Backbone
- Rotimi Thomas, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, SunFi
- Dr. Dumebi Okwechime, Founder and Chief Data Scientist, IziFin
- Temi Kolawole, Managing Director, Ilorin Innovation Hub
- Jonathan Woolf, Chief Revenue Officer, Intent HQ
Additional speakers included leaders from the American Business Council Nigeria, TVC Communications, Capital Club Lagos, Eden Venture Group, Catalyst Experience Solutions, and KPMG Nigeria, among others.
SIX PANEL SESSIONS COVERING NIGERIA’S MOST CRITICAL AI CONVERSATIONS
The summit’s programme was structured around six dedicated panel sessions, each addressing a distinct dimension of AI adoption in Nigeria:
- AI in Banking and Fintech: From Hype to Real Execution examined the practical realities of deploying AI inside Nigeria’s financial institutions, with panelists drawn from MTN Nigeria, Fidelity Bank, Access Holdings, First Bank, and IziFin.
Building the Rails for Intelligence addressed the infrastructure layer that AI depends on, with panellists from MTN Nigeria, Galaxy Backbone, WSO2, and Fringe Infrastructure. AI in Industry Regulation brought together representatives from the Central Bank of Nigeria, NUPRC, and NERC alongside a governance and compliance expert, to discuss how Nigeria’s regulatory bodies are approaching AI governance across sectors.
AI is Here. Is Your Workforce Ready? explored the human capital dimensions of AI adoption, with panellists from KPMG Nigeria, Catalyst Experience Solutions, and Bluechip Technologies.
- SheCodes the Algorithm: The Power of Women Rewriting Data and AI was a dedicated all-women session featuring the Chief Executive Officers of the American Business Council Nigeria, TVC Communications, and Capital Club Lagos, alongside the Founder of Eden Venture Group, moderated by a journalist from TVC News.
- AI in Energy: From Operations to Optimization brought together technology and innovation leaders from NLNG, SunFi, and Dangote Petroleum to discuss AI adoption across Nigeria’s energy sector.
- A fireside chat titled VC.AI: Pipelines, Profits, and a Bubble? featured Olumide Soyombo in conversation with Kola Aina of Ventures Platform Fund, examining the state of AI investment in Africa and the question of whether the current wave represents genuine value creation or a market cycle at risk of correction.
WORLD-CLASS PARTNER ECOSYSTEM
The summit was supported by an extensive partner ecosystem that included some of the most significant names in global enterprise technology. Official partners for Summit 3.0 included Oracle, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Dell Technologies, Huawei, Informatica from Salesforce, Redington, Mitsumi Distribution as an authorised Dell Technologies distributor, WSO2, Data
Science Nigeria (DSN), INTENT Customer Intelligence Lab, JADA Squad, PBN Solutions, and Vernovi Cyber.
THE DSN X BCT LLM AGENT CHALLENGE
In partnership with Data Science Nigeria, Bluechip Technologies co-hosted the DSN x BCT LLM Agent Challenge, a three-week hackathon that invited Nigeria’s developer and data science community to build intelligent large language model agents capable of solving real business problems. The challenge, which ran from 4th to 24th May 2026, culminated in a live Grand Finale at the summit on June 10th, with a total prize pool of four million naira distributed across the top ten submissions.
First place carried a prize of one million five hundred thousand naira, second place one million naira, and third place seven hundred and fifty thousand naira.
Bluechip Technologies Launches Proprietary AI-Native Enterprise Ecosystem
Managing Director and Co-founder Kazeem Tewogbade formally introduced the Bluechip Enterprise Ecosystem; a suite of homegrown, AI-native platforms marking the company’s strategic evolution from technology integrator to product company.
The ecosystem is built around three layers working in sequence, each designed to take African enterprises from raw data to intelligent decisions to measurable business outcomes.
- Layer 1 – The Data Ecosystem: The foundation of the ecosystem comprises three platforms. BDP is a high-performance data lakehouse that ingests, governs, and activates data at enterprise scale, currently processing over 150 billion events daily. Cribro is a data governance and master data management platform that eliminates fragmented records and establishes a single trusted source of truth across the enterprise. BluPrime sits on top of both, turning that trusted data into real-time insights, AI-powered analytics, and next-best-action recommendations for sales and marketing teams.
- Layer 2 – The Business Operations Ecosystem: This layer operationalises intelligence across the enterprise through four platforms. BluBridgeis an all-in-one FIRS-compliant e-invoicing, SME ERP, and AI tax advisory platform that helps businesses connect, comply, and grow with confidence. CashComplete handles digital cash and liquidity management for financial agility. The Customer Engagement Management(CEM) platform enables organisations to personalise customer experiences and drive loyalty at scale. BluEdge ties it all together as a comprehensive ERP system that unifies finance, operations, workforce, customers, and governance into a single AI-powered enterprise platform.
- Layer 3 – The Intelligence Fabric: Running across both layers is Bluechip’s Enterprise Intelligence Fabric, the AI-native core that embeds prediction, automation, analytics, and decision intelligence into every platform in the ecosystem. It is the layer that turns data and operations into continuous learning and smarter outcomes.
YarnGPT Unveiling
Tewogbade also unveiled YarnGPT, Bluechip’s African-built generative AI text-to-speech platform. YarnGPT converts text, documents, and videos into natural speech using authentic African voices across English, Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa, with expansion across more African languages underway. It is part of Bluechip’s broader AI Foundry vision to build, validate, and
commercialize AI products designed specifically for African markets. As Tewogbade put it: “Most AI models were built to understand the world. YarnGPT was built to understand our voices, our languages, our accents, and our stories.”
The company’s overarching promise for the entire ecosystem is captured in three linked outcomes: From Data to Intelligence. From Intelligence to Action. From Action to Outcomes.
EXECUTIVE COMMENTARY
Speaking at the summit, Kazeem Tewogbade, Managing Director and Co-founder of Bluechip Technologies, said:
“The Bluechip Data and AI Summit was founded on a simple conviction: Africa’s AI conversation deserves a world-class stage. Three editions in, the room we convene speaks for itself”.
From the DG of NITDA to the CXOs of Nigeria’s largest banks and Telcos, to Founders building AI companies from scratch, the calibre of people in this space confirms what we always believed. Africa is not on the periphery of this conversation. We are at the centre of it.”
Olumide Soyombo, Co-founder of Bluechip Technologies and Founder of Voltron Capital, added:
“What makes Summit 3.0 different is the quality of the questions being asked. We are past the stage of asking whether AI is relevant to Africa. The room today is asking how to build, regulate, fund, and scale it responsibly. That shift matters enormously for where the continent goes from here.”
ABOUT BLUECHIP TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED
Bluechip Technologies Limited is a pan-African enterprise technology and digital transformation company headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, with operations across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ireland. The company serves clients in banking, insurance, telecommunications, and the public sector, and holds Oracle Level 2 partner status. Bluechip Technologies is a member of the Anthropic Claude Partner Network.
