Nigerian Designer Using AI to Save Ancestors' Stories

When elderly Nigerians pass away, it's like entire libraries burning to the ground. Malik Afegbua knows this firsthand, and he's using artificial intelligence to save those stories before it's too late.

The 40-year-old filmmaker started noticing a troubling pattern in AI systems. When he asked them about Nigerian culture, the answers were wrong, biased, or focused only on the country's three major ethnic groups. Hundreds of smaller cultures and languages were being erased from the digital record simply because no one had documented them.

So Afegbua launched Legacy Link, a project that interviews Nigerians aged 80 and above about what life was like in their youth. But he's not just recording videos. He's training custom AI models to create digital versions of these elders that future generations can actually interact with.

The vision is extraordinary: imagine asking your great-great-grandmother questions and hearing responses based on her actual experiences, wisdom, and worldview. "For the first time in our lifetime, our ancestors will be available for the next generation to interact with," Afegbua says.

Getting there hasn't been easy. In Ikorodu, a Lagos suburb, a local chief told him that cultural stories shouldn't be shared with outsiders. Afegbua had to convince traditional leaders that preservation requires sharing, not secrecy.

He also had to solve a major technical problem. AI systems often "hallucinate," making up false information that sounds convincing. For a project about preserving truth, that could be catastrophic.

Afegbua's solution involves building guardrails into the AI that restrict it to verified facts only. The system can distinguish between documented knowledge and extrapolation, clearly labeling which is which.

His pilot project in Ikorodu shows what's possible. Working with UNESCO and Lagos State, he trained chiefs and traditionalists in their 50s, 60s, and 70s on AI and content creation. Many don't speak English, but they understood why documenting their heritage matters.

The team conducted 3D scans of artifacts, tagged and documented them, and captured stories in local languages with translator support. Now those stories are preserved accurately, told by the communities themselves rather than outsiders.

The Ripple Effect

Afegbua envisions hologram portals at bus stops in Lagos where anyone can access ancestral wisdom. Museums, websites, and digital public libraries could house these interactive cultural databases. The information could cover anything from traditional medicine to economic history to forgotten languages.

The project matters far beyond Nigeria. Indigenous knowledge worldwide is disappearing as elders pass away, and AI trained primarily on Western data perpetuates those gaps. Afegbua's work offers a blueprint for communities everywhere to preserve their truth before it's lost.

His journey to this work wasn't linear—he started by selling T-shirts in college, launched one of Nigeria's first online TV platforms, and produced reality shows. But he's always been a futurist, looking ahead to understand how we'll consume information and connect with our past.

Now he's making sure that when future Nigerian children ask about their ancestors, the answers will come from voices that actually lived those stories.