TIME Magazine lists Bosun Tijani among 100 most influential people in AI

By Michael Kalu

 Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communication, Innovation, and Digital Economy, has been listed among the TIME100 most influential people in AI in 2025.

TIME Magazine announced the list on Thursday in honour of leaders, innovators, and thinkers in telecommunication technology.

The list also includes Matthew Prince, Co-founder and Chief Executive of Cloudflare; Elon Musk, Founder of xAI, and Sam Altman, Chief Executive of OpenAI.

Others are Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, Andy Jassy, President and CEO of Amazon.

Time Magazine particurlarly identified Bosun Tijani’s achievements in 3MTT for the honour.

It described Tijani as “Nigeria’s statesman tasked with innovation, longtime entrepreneur.”

“ Bosun Tijani brings a startup mentality to government. Tijani leads the country’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) program, which aims to equip 3 million Nigerians with technical skills by 2027.

“To date, the 3MTT program has trained almost 300,000 Nigerians with a mix of its digital platform and 220 in-person learning centers; it also supports trainees in securing jobs, primarily through partnerships.”

While reacting to the honour on his X handle, the minister said his inclusion underscored Nigeria’s growing role in shaping the global future of artificial intelligence (AI).

“This honour is a reflection of the collective effort of innovators and partners who believe in the potential of AI to transform societies.

“Our journey in AI over the last 2 years has been transformative.

“From our National AI Strategy (NAIS) — where we got over 120 experts of Nigerian descent to co-create the long term strategy for the responsible use and development of AI; to research and demonstration initiatives showing the potentials and practical use cases for AI in critical sectors like healthcare, agriculture, education, and financial inclusion.”