By Folu Adebayo

I have not been able to stop thinking about the children of Oyo state.

On the fifteenth of May, gunmen came to three schools near Ogbomoso. They took dozens of pupils, some as young as two years old, and seven of their teachers. One of those teachers, a mathematics teacher named Michael Oyedokun, did not come home. He was killed. As I write this, many of the children and their teachers are still not free. A vice principal has appealed from captivity. Mothers are still waiting at windows.

I am not writing this week as anyone other than a mother, and a Nigerian. I have no expertise to offer on this. No framework. No solution. Only the same ache that millions of us are carrying, and a few quiet thoughts I cannot keep to myself.

There is a particular kind of trust a parent places in the world on the morning they send a child to school.

You comb the hair. You straighten the uniform. You press a little money into a small hand. You watch them go through a gate, and you let go. Every parent who has ever done this knows the quiet leap of faith it requires. We are handing the most precious thing we will ever hold to a building, to a teacher, to a community, and we are trusting all of them to give that child back to us at the end of the day.

For the parents of these children, that trust was broken in the most terrible way imaginable.

They did everything right. They sent their children to learn. And the children did not come back.

I keep thinking about how ordinary that morning must have been. The arguments about shoes. The rushing. The half-eaten breakfast. None of them knew. That is the part that undoes me. None of them knew it was that kind of morning.

“They did everything right. They sent their children to learn. And the children did not come back.”

And then there is Michael Oyedokun.
I did not know him. Most of us did not. But I know what he was. He was a mathematics teacher in a rural school, which means he had chosen one of the most quietly heroic lives a person can choose. He got up each day and went to teach children in a place the rest of the country too often forgets. He was not paid much. He was not celebrated. He simply showed up, year after year, and gave children the one thing that could change their lives, which is knowledge.
When the gunmen came, he was there with his students. And he did not come home.
We use the word hero too easily, and usually for the wrong people. But a man who spends his life teaching other people’s children in a forgotten village, and who dies among them, has earned that word completely. Michael Oyedokun was a hero. I want his name written down. I want it remembered. Not as a statistic in a tragedy, but as a man, a teacher, who mattered.

There is something almost unbearable about the fact that this happened at a school.
School is meant to be the safest promise a society makes to its children. It is where we send them to become more than we were.

For generations of Nigerian families, education has been the one ladder out, the thing parents sacrifice everything for, the reason mothers sell their last wrapper, and fathers work themselves into the ground. We tell our children that if they go to school and they learn, the world will open for them.

And so to attack a school is to attack the deepest hope a people hold. It is to tell every parent in the country that the one safe promise is no longer safe. That the ladder out can be taken from you in the time it takes for a truck to arrive.

I do not believe that promise is broken. I refuse to believe it. But I understand the fear of every parent who tightened their grip on a small hand this week and wondered, for the first time, whether the gate they were walking toward was safe.

I have spent much of my life thinking about systems, about technology, about the machinery that runs a modern society. And there is a temptation, in a week like this, to reach for the language of solutions. To talk about what could be built, monitored, deployed.

I am not going to do that. Because no system, however clever, matters more than a society’s simple willingness to protect its children. That willingness is not a technology. It is a choice. It is the most basic test of whether a nation is worthy of the name. Everything else we build, every road and bank and tower and innovation, means nothing if a mother cannot send her child to school and trust that he will come home.

“No system, however clever, matters more than a society’s simple willingness to protect its children.”

So this week I am not offering an argument.

I am offering only this.

To the parents of Oyo still waiting: there is a mother in London who thinks of you when she wakes, and who prays your children are returned to your arms whole and soon. You are not forgotten. The whole country is shouting your children’s names.

To the family of Michael Oyedokun: thank you. The word is far too small. He gave his life among the children he taught, and a grateful stranger will remember his name.

And to every teacher who will still walk into a classroom tomorrow, in a rural village, in a frightened community, knowing what happened in Oyo and going anyway: you are the bravest people in this country. You carry our future on your backs. We see you. We will not forget what it costs you.

May God bring this home soon. And may we become, at last, a nation that deserves the trust those parents placed in us on an ordinary morning in May.

By Folu Adebayo

This column is usually about boards, regulators, and the governance of artificial intelligence. But this week I want to write about a child.

My son’s name is Akintade. He is autistic. And the journey of getting him to a place where the world saw what I saw that took years longer than it should have.

I want to tell you what that journey was actually like. Because I think most discussions of AI in our newspapers are missing something important and Akintade is the reason I know it.

The years I do not talk about often

When Akintade was young, I knew. Not in any clinical way. I just knew. A mother knows.

I took him to GPs who told me to wait and see. I took him to schools who said he would catch up. I took him to family members who told me I was worrying too much. The system around him was full of patient, well-meaning people. None of them could see what I could see.

The wait for formal assessment in our NHS was years. Years during which he was in a classroom that did not understand him. Years during which I sat in meetings as a senior professional, carrying invisibly the knowledge that something was wrong with my child and the inability to prove it.
I want African mothers reading this to know I see you. Because what I went through in the United Kingdom, you may be going through with even fewer resources, even longer waits, even less understanding from the system around you.

The autism diagnosis journey is one of the loneliest journeys a parent can walk. And it is happening, right now, in Lagos and Abuja and Accra and Nairobi and Kano and Cape Town. To mothers and fathers who watch their children struggle and have no idea where to turn.

“The autism diagnosis journey is one of the loneliest journeys a parent can walk.”

The promise I made

Somewhere in the middle of our journey with Akintade, I made myself a promise.
If I ever got to a place where I could help if my skills and credentials and energy ever amounted to something useful. I would build something so that no parent had to walk that journey alone. Not in the United Kingdom. Not in Nigeria. Not anywhere.

For a long time the promise sat there. Akintade grew. He became the best of himself. He found his strengths. He became the brilliant, particular, wonderful young man he is.

And artificial intelligence developed.

What AI is actually for

This is where we usually pause in this column to talk about governance, risk, regulators, and the corporate implications of artificial intelligence.

Today I want to make a different point.
Artificial intelligence at its best, used carefully and responsibly has the capacity to do something the institutions around us have not always done. It can listen. It can help a parent put words to what they are seeing. It can produce a structured report at three in the morning when there is nobody else to talk to. It can do this in the parent’s own language. It can do this for free.

It cannot diagnose. It cannot replace the clinical professionals our children need.
But it can hand a worried, exhausted, isolated parent something tangible to walk into a GP appointment with.
That is the gap I have built into.

The tool that came from a promise

It is called Neurohelp.ai. The website is www.neurohelp.ai . It is free. It is available in ten languages including Yoruba. It works for any age from eighteen months to adulthood. It carries no advertising and asks nothing of the family using it.

I built it for the mother who knows. The father who is too tired to keep fighting alone. The grandmother holding the baby and wondering why he does not respond to his name. The teacher who suspects something but does not know how to raise it with the parent. The adult who has spent forty years wondering why they are different.

Last week a mother contacted me. She had been on a waiting list in UK for years. She had tried Neurohelp.ai. She had generated a report. She had taken it to her GP. She had finally, for the first time in years ,booked the appointment that might change her child’s life.

She sent me a message saying thank you. She told me she had cried while typing it. She said I deserved an MBE for what the tool had done for her family.
And I cried too.

Because for a moment, I felt the promise I made years ago land in the world.

“The value of AI is not measured in boardrooms. It is measured in a single mother finally having the words to describe her child.”

Why I am writing this in a business column

I am writing this in a column about AI because I want African business leaders, technologists, regulators, and entrepreneurs reading this newspaper to understand something.

Artificial intelligence is not just a tool for productivity. It is not just a competitive advantage. It is not just a regulatory headache.

It is one of the most important opportunities Africa has ever had to close the gaps that the institutions around us have not yet closed for children with autism, for mothers in rural areas, for adults navigating diagnoses, for communities historically underserved.

If you are building AI in Africa, build it for them. If you are funding AI in Africa, fund the founders building it for them. If you are governing AI in Africa, make space for the small, mission-driven tools that do not have venture funding but do have purpose.
Because the value of AI is not measured in the boardrooms of Silicon Valley or the regulatory texts of Brussels. It is measured in a single mother in Lagos finally having the words to describe her child’s experience. It is measured in a GP appointment booked. It is measured in a family no longer alone.

The work continues

Akintade is now a young man. He inspires me daily.

Neurohelp.ai is the tool I built because I love him. Akintade Autism Centre is the work I do because I want every family to feel the support that I have. The charity Autism Treatment Support Initiatives UK registered, is the structure that makes that work sustainable.

I share this not as a promotion. I share it because the journey from one family’s pain to a tool that can help thousands is exactly the kind of journey African AI can lead the world on.

If you know a family on a waiting list, share Neurohelp.ai with them today.

If you are a parent reading this who is carrying invisible weight at work and at home , I want you to know you are seen. You are not alone. And the work you are doing for your child matters more than almost anything else in this world.

The day I built Neurohelp.ai was the day I kept a promise I made to myself in the darkest part of our journey.

Africa’s AI moment can be a thousand kept promises. To a thousand families. In a thousand languages. Free of cost. Built with love.

That is what AI is actually for.

By Folu Adebayo

A lawyer in the United Kingdom needed to summarise a confidential client document. Forty pages. A busy day. So they did what millions of professionals around the world now do without a second thought.

They pasted it into an AI tool.

Faster than reading it line by line. Nobody had told them not to. Nobody had told them they could. There was no policy. No training.

No record of the decision.

It seemed harmless. It was not.

A UK tribunal has now ruled that uploading confidential documents to an AI tool can be treated as the equivalent of placing them in the public domain. The legal privilege protecting those documents, the confidentiality that is the very foundation of the relationship between a professional and their client was lost. Permanently.

Not because anyone acted in bad faith. Because the tool did what such tools do the moment information is entered into them.

“The employee was not trying to do anything wrong. They were trying to work faster.”

Why this matters far beyond the United Kingdom

It would be easy for African business leaders to read this as a distant story. A British tribunal. A British case. A British problem.

That would be a mistake.

The behaviour at the centre of this ruling a professional pasting confidential information into an AI tool to save time is happening in every law firm, every bank, every hospital, every government office, and every consultancy in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, and Johannesburg right now. Today. As you read this.

The technology does not respect borders. The behaviour does not respect borders. The risk does not respect borders.

The only thing that varies from country to country is whether there is a governance framework in place to manage it and whether the people using these tools have been told, clearly, what is and is not permitted.

In most African organisations, that framework does not yet exist.

The quiet leak

Consider what is most likely happening inside your own organisation as you read this.

A member of staff has a long report to summarise. They paste it into a free AI tool.

A colleague is drafting a difficult email and asks an AI assistant to improve the wording including the confidential context. Someone in finance uploads a spreadsheet of sensitive figures to ask the AI to analyse it. A junior employee, eager and capable, uploads a client contract to extract the key terms quickly.

None of these people are acting maliciously. Every one of them is trying to do their job well.

And every one of them may be moving confidential information client data, commercial secrets, personal information, privileged material outside the protected boundary of the organisation.

This is not a hypothetical risk. Industry research suggests that the overwhelming majority of organisations have employees using AI tools, while only a small minority have any policy governing what may be entered into them. The gap between adoption and governance is not narrowing. It is widening.

“The technology does not respect borders. Neither does the risk.”

Why Africa is particularly exposed
There are three reasons this risk is especially acute across African markets.

First, AI adoption across Africa has been rapid, mobile-first, and largely informal. Professionals have embraced AI tools with energy and ingenuity often ahead of the organisations they work for. That is a strength. But it means usage is running far ahead of governance.

Second, many African organisations do not yet have the data protection infrastructure, the internal compliance functions, or the governance frameworks that would, in other markets, provide at least some guardrails. The legal frameworks are developing , Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa have all made significant progress on data protection but the translation of law into day-to-day organisational practice remains incomplete.
Third, the consequences of a confidentiality breach are severe in any market, but in markets where trust is hard-won and reputational damage spreads quickly, the cost can be existential. A bank that leaks customer data, a law firm that loses privilege over client documents, a hospital that exposes patient information these are not recoverable inconveniences. They are breaches of the trust on which the entire business depends.

What African leaders must do now
The good news is that the solution is neither expensive nor complex. It does not require new technology. It requires leadership, clarity, and a small amount of disciplined effort.

First, establish a clear AI usage policy. A single, plain-language document that states what types of information may and may not be entered into AI tools. It does not need to be sophisticated. It needs to exist, and it needs to be communicated.

Second, train your people. Not a lengthy programme a clear, honest conversation. Most employees who create AI-related risk do so because nobody has explained the danger to them. Once they understand, the overwhelming majority adjust their behaviour immediately.

Third, create a record. The UK tribunal ruling makes clear that when accountability is tested, organisations will be expected to demonstrate that their people understood the rules. A simple, dated record showing that staff have received and acknowledged the AI usage policy is no longer an administrative nicety. It is a protection.

Fourth, lead by example. When senior leaders talk openly about responsible AI use, it gives everyone else permission to ask the questions they are currently afraid to ask.

The opportunity inside the warning
It would be easy to read this column as a reason to fear AI, or to restrict it. That is not my intention.

AI is one of the most powerful tools African professionals have ever had access to. It can close capability gaps, accelerate work, and allow small organisations to compete with much larger ones. The answer is not to ban it. The answer is to govern it.

The organisations that will thrive in the African AI economy are not the ones that move fastest or the ones that move most cautiously. They are the ones that move deliberately adopting AI with energy, and governing it with discipline.

The UK tribunal ruling is a warning. But it is a warning delivered early enough to act on. African leaders who read it, understand it, and act on it now will protect their organisations, their clients, and their reputations.

Those who treat it as someone else’s story will learn the same lesson later and at a far higher price.

The choice, as always, belongs to leadership.

Folu is AI Architect & Risk & Governance Director, United Kingdom, Founder of AIExpertsPro, and an AI governance advisor to UK and African financial institutions, and can be reached via aiexpertspro.co.uk/folu@aiexpertspro.co.uk