Jos is set to host the HERIntelligence AI Annual Summit on October 23, under the theme “Her Future in AI: Equipping Girls for the Digital Economy.” The one-day event, branded HAAS26, is scheduled for 9 a.m. and carries a partner list that mixes a Jos-based conglomerate with specialist tech and training outfits, including NASCO, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, CoLab, Wentors, ZITI and auuxi, among others named on the event’s promotional material. Beyond that flyer, there isn’t yet independent press coverage of the summit, the organizing HER initiative behind it, or any prior edition, so what’s knowable right now is limited to what the organizers themselves are publishing rather than anything verified outside it.
What is verifiable is that Jos is a plausible, rather than random, place for this to happen. Plateau State runs its own dedicated ICT agency, PICTDA, tasked with building out the state’s digital ecosystem, and the state government under Governor Caleb Mutfwang has already run its own large-scale push to get women into digital skills and AI training, alongside the kind of coding and cinematography instruction aimed at giving participants a path to income rather than just exposure. NASCO, the conglomerate listed among HAAS26’s partners, has separately run its own AI and digital-skills training reaching hundreds of young people across Nigeria. None of that confirms HAAS26 will deliver on its billing, but it does mean a girls-focused AI summit in Jos fits a pattern the state has been actively building, not a one-off event with no local foundation underneath it.
The problem it’s aimed at is real and well documented, even if this specific summit’s impact isn’t yet measurable. Nigeria’s Financial Institutions Training Centre has put the share of STEM graduates who are female at roughly 22%, against about 50% in the United States, with women accounting for only around a quarter of the country’s tech workforce and roughly 5% of its tech leadership roles. The United Nations separately estimates a global gap of 259 million fewer women than men with internet access at all, the more basic divide that any AI-specific gap sits on top of. Against those numbers, a single annual summit is a small intervention, and its real test won’t be October 23 itself but whether HAAS26 becomes a recurring fixture with something to show for it a year from now, the way Plateau’s other girls-in-tech efforts have aimed to.
