The 12th Champions of Talent Development Conference (CTD 2026) opened in Lagos, with speakers on the first day calling for a human-centred approach to workplace learning as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes how organisations develop their workforce.
The two-day conference, organised by Learning and Development Network International (LDNI), focused on how organisations can embrace AI and other technologies without losing human judgement, empathy, accountability and real-world experience.
The conference is themed “Human-Centered Learning: Balancing Technology and People” and brings together learning and development professionals, HR Professionals and other industry leaders to examine the changing role of technology in learning and development.
Speaking at the opening of the conference, LDNI President, David Brown, said training was not always the answer to an organisation’s problem, stressing the need for L&D professionals to first understand the actual challenge before deciding whether training should be part of the solution.
Brown said the L&D profession was multifaceted and that training delivery was only one of the capabilities required of professionals in the field.
He also urged leaders to develop themselves and their people, noting that leadership comes with the responsibility of developing talent.
According to him, AI is here to stay, but human intelligence remains important as professionals learn to use technology to help people experience meaningful development and transformation.
“The future of talent development will undoubtedly be more technology-enabled and AI-powered. Our responsibility is to ensure that it also becomes more human,” Brown said.
Delivering the keynote address, Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Dr Emomotimi Agama, said the future of learning and development would require organisations to combine “high-tech” tools such as AI, analytics, automation and digital learning with “high-touch” approaches including mentoring, coaching, human judgement and real-world experience.
Agama said technology could not manufacture trust, belonging and contextual understanding, stressing that L&D must move beyond a focus on courses and attendance to demonstrate its contribution to organisational performance.
He said organisations should measure learning by outcomes such as productivity, employee mobility, quality of performance, innovation, leadership relevance, customer outcomes and overall organisational impact.
Agama also said public-sector learning and development should be viewed as part of national development because institutional capacity depends on human capacity.
He noted that the changing financial and regulatory environment would require future professionals to combine AI and digital literacy with critical thinking, systems thinking, problem-solving, communication, collaboration, empathy, adaptability, expert judgement and decision-making.
He cited the 70-20-10 approach to learning, which places emphasis on experience, interaction with people such as coaches and mentors, and formal courses.
“Technology cannot transform culture because technology does not speak,” Agama said, adding that competitive advantage would increasingly depend on the quality of people developed around technology.
The conference also featured a panel discussion titled “AI in Learning – Tool, Threat, or Teammate?”, moderated by LDNI Deputy President, Habiba Balogun.
Panelists examined how organisations and professionals could use AI while managing concerns around job displacement, bias, accountability, data protection and human judgement.
Chief Consultant at BFT Consulting Services Ltd, Suleiman Shaibu, urged organisations to first identify the business outcomes they want AI to achieve before purchasing or adopting tools.
He advised organisations to identify repetitive tasks that AI can handle and organise their processes before introducing technology.
Shaibu also encouraged workers who are concerned about AI taking their jobs to learn how to integrate the technology into their existing roles.
“Please learn how to put AI in your job,” he said, stressing that there would continue to be roles for both AI and human judgement.
Founder and Principal Consultant of Box22 Consulting, Pai Gamde, said AI should not automatically be regarded as a teammate because it cannot demonstrate accountability in the same way as a human colleague.
“I think a teammate is supposed to have accountability, but AI cannot demonstrate accountability,” she said.
Gamde said professionals should learn to use AI as a thinking partner rather than simply an answering machine, adding that users must be able to evaluate the information generated by AI and exercise judgement.
Director of Executive Education at Lagos Business School, Victor Banjo, said he did not view AI as a threat, noting that the institution had embraced the technology.
He, however, stressed the need for governance around the use of AI in education, particularly in determining how students should use the technology and how learning and assessments should be evaluated.
Banjo also said AI could not replace the richness of human interaction and conversation in the classroom, while noting that technology could be used to enhance learning from human interactions.
Co-Founder and Managing Director of AI in Nigeria, Dotun Adeoye, said professionals and organisations needed to understand that AI tools were not limited to ChatGPT and similar applications and should instead consider how AI could be applied to their specific work.
“AI will give you information, not knowledge,” Adeoye said.
He cautioned professionals against accepting AI-generated information without verification, sharing an example of people using AI to generate inaccurate information about speakers at an event.
Adeoye also highlighted the importance of technical expertise, governance, data protection and legal compliance as organisations adopt generative and agentic AI.
In a masterclass on “Writing Powerful AI Prompts”, Lead Consultant at Wysewater Consulting Services Ltd, Omolaja Shoniran, said effective prompting was not necessarily about making prompts long or short.
He said professionals should approach prompting as a conversation, providing AI with sufficient context about the situation and the desired outcome, while still applying human judgement to the responses generated.
Earlier, delivering a goodwill message, GLADNet Vice President, John Louis Opata, said the 12th edition of CTD demonstrated LDNI’s commitment to keeping talent development at the centre of Africa’s future-of-work conversation.
Opata said AI, digital platforms and analytics could make learning more personalised, scalable and data-driven, but could not replace human connection.
He said L&D professionals were responsible for shaping learning experiences, organisational capability, culture and performance, urging them to embrace technology without surrendering the human touch.
Also, President and Chairman of Council of the Nigerian Institute of Training and Development (NITAD), Bulus James, in his goodwill message described the conference theme as timely, noting that AI and digital ecosystems were reshaping the corporate environment while the human element remained important to organisational resilience.
James said technology could serve as a powerful multiplier, but empathy, creativity and strategic intent remained necessary to unlock human potential.
He said NITAD and LDNI shared a commitment to human capital transformation and organisational performance, adding that collaboration between both organisations should continue.
The first day also featured discussions on adaptive learning cultures, learning experience design, practical AI use cases for Nigerian organisations and building professional identity and influence.
The second day of the conference, focused on “Ideas to Action” and featured a panel discussion titled “Learning as an Asset: Turning L&D into a Financial Value Driver for Organisations and Professionals.”
