FG unveils first AI project with 500 fellows

The Nigerian government’s efforts to boost the country’s tech industry have received a significant boost with the engagement of 500 fellows from the 3 Million Technical Talent programme by Awarri, the startup selected to build Nigeria’s first Artificial Intelligence.

Awarri, which was launched in November 2023, has grown to a team of 120 staff and has now added 500 data collectors from the government’s programme to support the development of Nigeria’s first Large Language Multilingual Model.

Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, said in a statement posted on his X account on Wednesday, “I’m glad to see the growth of the Awarri team and the engagement of over 500 fellows from our 3MTTNigeria program as data collectors. This is a significant step towards achieving our goal of creating a robust tech ecosystem in Nigeria.”

In April, the minister announced the launch of Nigeria’s first LLM after a four-day AI workshop in Abuja.

The Minister said the project is a collaboration between Awarri, DataDotOrg, the National Information Technology Development Agency and the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, supported by over 7,000 fellows from the 3MTT programme and $3.5m in funding from various partners.

“The LLM will be trained in five low-resource languages and accented English to ensure stronger language representation in existing datasets for the development of AI solutions,” the minister stated. “The project will also be supported by over 7,000 fellows from the 3MTT programme.”

“The initiative launched under the Renewed Hope agenda, targets training 30,000 individuals in its first phase, focusing on twelve technical skills, including software development and cybersecurity.

“President Bola Tinubu has emphasised the significance of the programme as a cornerstone of his administration’s strategy to create 2 million digital jobs by 2025,” Tijani said.

He viewed the initiative as vital for building Nigeria’s technical talent pool and positioning the country as a net exporter of tech talent.