WTO warns Nigeria, Africa to bridge digital gap or miss AI-driven trade boom

By Victor Ahiuma-Young

Geneva — The World Trade Organization (WTO) has cautioned Nigeria and different processing economies that without urgent concern successful integer infrastructure, skills, and regulatory capacity, they hazard being sidelined successful an emerging surge of commercialized driven by artificial quality (AI).

The informing came with the motorboat of the WTO’s 2025 World Trade Report and companion study, Trading with Intelligence: How AI Shapes and is Shaped by International Trade. The reports item some the transformative imaginable and looming risks of AI successful reshaping planetary commerce.

Under an optimistic script of cosmopolitan AI adoption and beardown productivity maturation by 2040, planetary existent commercialized could emergence by astir 14 percent points, the study projects. However, with uneven AI uptake and weaker productivity growth, gains could autumn to nether 7 percent points.

According to the report, AI offers opportunities to automate customs clearance, streamline borderline controls, navigate analyzable regulations, and amended hazard prediction. Such advances could assistance smaller economies and tiny businesses entree planetary markets — but lone if integer infrastructure, skills, and regulatory barriers are addressed.

It warned, however, of widening inequalities: “A increasing AI disagreement betwixt affluent and mediocre countries, and betwixt ample and tiny firms, is simply a existent risk,” the survey noted, alongside concerns astir governance, privacy, intelligence property, and spot successful AI technologies.

WTO Director-General, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, stressed that portion the multilateral trading strategy is nether pressure, AI presents some opportunities and challenges.

“These are investigating times for the multilateral trading system,” she said. “But AI is 1 of the trends reshaping the aboriginal of the planetary system and planetary trade. This study aims to spark treatment connected however the WTO tin beforehand AI’s improvement and mitigate its risks, particularly concerns astir regulatory fragmentation.”

She further asked: “How tin the WTO assistance guarantee that the benefits of AI are broadly shared? How tin we code AI’s challenges successful a globally coordinated way?”

Okonjo-Iweala added that AI volition not lone boost services commercialized but could besides make caller categories of tradeable goods, from autonomous vehicles to robotics.

On Nigeria’s prospects, WTO officials highlighted the value of integer readiness. “If Nigeria and akin economies adjacent portions of their integer spread with high-income countries — done broadband, electricity, hardware, and skills grooming — they could seizure acold much of AI’s benefits successful trade,” the study noted.

Failure to act, however, could spot Nigeria miss retired connected growth, deepen inequality, and conflict to enactment meaningfully successful an AI-powered planetary economy.

The station WTO warns Nigeria, Africa to span integer spread oregon miss AI-driven commercialized boom appeared archetypal connected Vanguard News.