Meet 5 AI startups from Nigeria that make us proud

You wouldn’t necessarily think of Nigeria when someone mentions AI. You would probably think it’s something reserved for the Silicon Valley and major Asian tech hubs. But Nigeria has steadily emerged as a rising AI force in Africa. Artificial intelligence has gained interest from innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors. Nigeria’s youthful population, combined with growing internet penetration, a vibrant developer community, and increased government interest, has created fertile ground for innovation. Local founders are increasingly looking inward, building solutions that are culturally relevant, language-aware, and economically viable. From healthcare to insurance, no-code AI, and even national-scale language modeling, the country’s AI startup scene is doing more than just catching up.

Why do these five Nigerian AI startups make us proud? Because they’re tackling problems that Nigerians face every day. Real, tangible problems. They’re not chasing trends but filling critical gaps in insurance, healthcare, and financial services, making life a little easier for millions. And this is where startups in developing countries differ from those in more developed markets. In Nigeria, AI is largely used to solve pressing, everyday challenges, whether it’s improving access to healthcare, financial services, or insurance. In contrast, much of the AI momentum in Western countries is driven by consumer-facing products. According to our own research, AI agents, chatbots, and AI companions are among the fastest-growing use cases. At least, that’s the indication based on data from a group of AI experts we consulted, along with findings from their latest review site HeavenGirlfriend.

Currently, Nigeria’s AI startup scene is supported by a favorable macroeconomic shift, including government support, infrastructure investments, and policies aimed at diversifying the economy beyond oil. The federal government’s push toward digital transformation is becoming increasingly visible through institutions like the National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), a flagship initiative under the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). NCAIR is playing a critical role in nurturing local AI talent, like the following five companies.

Awarri – Giving Nigerian Languages a Voice in AI

When Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy announced that the country would be building its own large language model, the decision to partner with a little-known startup called Awarri raised eyebrows, and for good reason. At the time, most people in Nigeria hadn’t even heard of them.

But Awarri, co-founded by robotics veteran Silas Adekunle and gaming entrepreneur Eniola Edun, wasn’t just any fledgling company. They saw an opportunity. Nigeria has over 500 native languages, vastly underrepresented in a global AI industry. They had a bold vision: to bring many of those languages into the global AI conversation. The Lagos-based startup is developing a foundational model trained in five low-resource Nigerian languages and accented English. Through its LangEasy app, anyone with a smartphone can contribute to the dataset by recording voice clips. It’s crowdsourced, decentralized, and distinctly local in its ambition.

More than 100 workers are already annotating and curating data at Awarri’s AI lab in Ikorodu. The startup aims to pre-train on 10 billion text tokens and fine-tune on 600,000 instruction samples. And while Awarri is building its model from scratch, it also contributes data to OpenAI’s GPT-4, positioning itself within the global AI ecosystem while building locally rooted solutions.

Autogon AI – AI for the Rest of Us

Most businesses want AI. Very few can afford to hire engineers or build models from scratch. Autogon AI is solving this exact problem by creating a no-code platform where businesses can drag and drop their way to powerful AI solutions, without writing a single line of code. Led by Obi Ebuka David, who previously co-founded Identity Pass (now Prembly), Autogon is an audacious attempt to democratize AI infrastructure. The startup has built 98% of its stack in-house, avoiding reliance on giants like AWS or Azure. Instead, it’s created its own model training systems, APIs, and algorithms from the ground up.

What does this mean in practice? A bank in Nigeria can use Autogon AI to flag fraudulent transactions, or a health research team can use it to detect tuberculosis or analyze brain hemorrhages. Even complex generative AI use cases are on the table. Autogon is already deploying low-level GenAI models connected via Google’s attention architecture. The startup is bootstrapped, with less than $150,000 in funding, and already generating solid monthly revenue. It’s a lean, determined team trying to replicate what DeepSeek did in China, build transformative AI tech on a budget. With Autogon, Nigeria has an engine for other startups to plug into.

Aajoh AI – Diagnosing with Data

Healthcare access in Nigeria is limited. With a ratio of one doctor for every 4,000 patients, getting timely diagnosis is often a luxury. That’s the problem Aajoh AI is addressing. Using artificial intelligence to bridge the diagnostic gap through simple interfaces like text, audio, and image inputs. Founded by Simi Adejumo and a team of co-founders, Aajoh allows users to send symptoms via multiple formats, after which the platform delivers likely conditions for medical review. The app isn’t meant to replace doctors, but rather to filter cases so physicians can focus on those who truly need physical care.

The model behind Aajoh learns from the data it collects, improving its prediction accuracy with each interaction. With just $10,000 in angel funding, the startup has signed up two corporate clients and dozens of users through a pilot program, primarily targeting employers who want to offer basic health screening to their staff. Adejumo’s strategy is pragmatic. First, solve the low-hanging problem of poor triage. Then scale to new geographies, with India being next. And all the while, keep the focus on using AI not as a novelty, but as a functional necessity in under-resourced environments.

Curacel – Redefining Insurtech Across Africa

Insurance is one of the most underpenetrated sectors in Africa, with only 2.8% of the population covered. Fraud, inefficiency, and archaic processes have stifled growth. Curacel is cutting through the noise with AI-driven claims automation and embedded insurance APIs that aim to modernize the industry. Fast. Co-founded by Henry Mascot and John Dada, Curacel started out as an Electronic Health Record, but quickly pivoted after identifying that the real pain point was insurance claims. Today, the company operates in eight African countries, including Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and Ghana, and serves over 100 businesses and 20 insurance providers.

Its flagship product, Grow, enables banks, fintechs, and e-commerce platforms to embed insurance directly into their services. On the backend, Curacel’s AI processes claims in real-time, reducing cycle times by over 70% and dramatically increasing claim accuracy. The company is also backed by a strong roster of investors, including Y Combinator, Tencent, and Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola, with over $100 million in claims processed and a 500% jump in revenue last year.

What sets Curacel apart isn’t just its tech, but its ambition to be the Stripe of African insurance, building the rails on which the next generation of insurance products will run.

BetaLife Health – Predicting Blood Shortages Before They Happen

Nigeria’s healthcare challenges are well-documented. But one of the most silent crises is the country’s unstable blood supply system. BetaLife Health is tackling this with an AI-powered platform that predicts blood demand and optimizes logistics to get blood where it’s needed most, before it’s needed. Founded by Mubarak Ayanniyi and Okwoli Mathew, the startup has quickly gained traction. It won the 2024 ACT Foundation Changemakers Innovation Challenge, bagged ₦10 million from the Google AI Fund, and secured up to $3.5 million in Google Cloud Credits. It was also Nigeria’s only health-tech startup invited to the G20 Digital Alliance Summit in India. It won the NaijaSDG Hackathon organized by Microsoft and is now working closely with NIGCOMSAT to leverage satellite connectivity for healthcare delivery in remote areas.

What makes BetaLife truly stand out is its systemic approach. Rather than simply building an app, it’s building an infrastructure. That infrastructure combines AI, logistics, public health, and telecommunications to improve outcomes. It’s also uniquely Nigerian in its problem-solving. Rural connectivity? They’re solving it with satellites. Blood donor engagement? They’re solving it with machine learning. In a world of copy-paste health-tech models, BetaLife is writing its own playbook.

Nigeria’s AI Future Is Just Getting Started

With the market size projected to hit US$1.31 billion by 2025, and growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.3%, Nigeria is clearly on an upward trajectory. By 2031, the local AI industry is expected to reach US$5.3 billion, reflecting both its potential and the urgent demand for technology-driven solutions across healthcare, finance, logistics, and beyond. At least according to Statista. This growth is being fueled by Nigeria’s tech-savvy, youthful population which is embracing AI in ways that reflect the country’s practical needs. As highlighted by startups like Awarri, Autogon AI, Aajoh, Curacel, and BetaLife Health, Nigerian AI companies are carving out a distinctive identity, one that is grounded in problem-solving, not hype. While Silicon Valley may chase the next viral chatbot, Nigeria’s innovators are building tools that save lives, cut costs, and widen access to basic services.

What’s clear is that Nigeria’s AI journey is not a copy of what’s happening in the United States or Europe. The Nigerian market isn’t simply adopting foreign models but creating its own. With a projected five-fold market expansion by 2031, Nigeria is well on its way to becoming an AI hub not just for Africa, but for emerging markets globally. And that’s why this moment and these five startups matters. Because in a world increasingly driven by artificial intelligence, Nigeria is choosing to lead not by imitation, but by innovation. We’re proud of our every AI startup, and we wish them good luck.