African LLMs pick up speed; AI & coding for Egyptian schools
Africa AI News weekly digest...
Good morning!
And welcome to the first full issue of Africa AI News – Weekly News Digest!
Published in partnership with Middle East AI News, we plan to grow this publication to be the top one-stop resource for news about AI in Africa. New tech, new players, policy work, R&D, accelerators, real-world applications and success stories of effective AI implementations in business and government on our big continent.
If you like what you see, pass it on to other you know who are interested in AI in Africa. If you have an AI business, are developing your own AI or simply want to share something interesting with the African AI community, just reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you.
And now, on with our first official issue!
/Roger
LLMs
Lelapa AI launches SLM for African languages
#SouthAfrica #LLM — Adding heft to LLM capability for African languages, Johannesburg-based AI startup Lelapa.ai has developed a lightweight African language model, InkubaLM-0.4B, trained for five African languages: Hausa, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Swahili, and Yoruba, (Lelapa.ai)
New African AI-powered natural language search engine
#Africa #search — Seeek.ai (yes, three e’s) is designed as a mobile-first natural language search engine supporting numerous African tongues, including French, Swahili, Arabic, English, and five South African languages – IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, Afrikaans, Sesotho and Setswana. From the people that bought you Suppple (yes, three p’s) and GovChat. (ITWeb)
Tanzania develops Kiswahili LLMs with Italy’s Almawave
#Tanzania #Swahili — Open source AI model from Italy’s Almawave will serve as a platform for the Tanzanian Information and Communications Technologies Commission (ICTC) to provide its Swahili training data to develop tools to serve public sector applications. (The Citizen)
Competitions
Morocco InnovAIHackathon registration now open
#Morocco #hackathon - The MoroccoAI 2024 InnovAIHackathon is now accepting registrations. This online event, part of the MoroccoAI Annual Conference, invites participants to create AI-driven solutions in sectors like agriculture, education, health, and finance. Prizes include 20,000 MAD for the winner. (Google doc)
Digital Transformation
Tanzania to adopt AI in e-govt platforms
#Tanzania #e-government — Tanzania’s minister of Public Service and Good Governance has pressed for the adoption of AI and advanced automation technology into e-government systems to fill the gap left by what he described as challenges to effective delivery of government services caused by “the prevalent lackadaisical attitude among many workers”. (Mediawireexpress)
Education
AI & coding to be added to Egyptian secondary schools
#Egypt #secondaryschools – Egypt’s Ministry of Education will make AI and coding core subjects for secondary schools starting in the 2025-26 academic year. (Ahram Online)
Morocco’s UM6P opens new cybersecurity college
#Morocco #cybersecurity - Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) has inaugurated a cybersecurity centre in Rabat, aiming to establish itself as a leading centre for cybersecurity education. (7News)
Google fund to skill-up 25,000 Nigerian educators
#Nigeria #education — More details on our previous story about Google’s grant … the money is earmarked for “train the trainer” style skills dev to eventually reach 200,000 learners in Nigeria. It will be administered through Data Science Nigeria, which will bolster the Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy’s ongoing AI-driven initiatives to up-skill youth. (Business Day note: have your popup blockers set to “maximum” if you visit that link)
Funding
New AI & ML research funding to support African SDGs
#Africa #research #sustainability — The African Centre for Technology Studies in Kenya has received a grant to provide scholarships for doctoral or early career research into AI and ML techniques that support SDGs in Sub-Saharan Africa. (ACTS)
AI Policy
Rwanda and Benin tech thinktanks in tie up
#Africa #skills — Smart Africa Alliance’s Manifesto is endorsed by the African Union; iSheero has taken on the mantle for Francophone Africa. The two organisations are now co-operating under a two year MOU to improve access to AI education and support innovation and research. (Tech Africa News)
Portuguese-speaking judges ratify AI principles
#Africa #justice — International Union of Portuguese-Speaking Judges (UIJLP) (members include Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde) have ratified guidance that the use of AI in justice must be ethical and responsible, administered by the judiciary and without interference from other powers, and that suggested texts are reviewed by (human) judges. (Menosfios, IAJ)
Sentiment
AI-driven fake news worries young Africans
#Africa #youth — A vast majority of African youth (18-24) fear the dangers of fake news to their communities, with dubious content driven by malign use of AI tech tools. According to the African Youth Survey 2024 from Johannesburg-based Ichikowitz Family Foundation, the good news is that half the young people still think AI can be a positive force. Download PDF. (Connecting Africa)
Applications
Academic calls for AI to combat Africa’s food security challenges
#Africa #biotechnology — An South African academic outlines case for African delegates to COP29 (starting next week) to push for adoption of AI to improve resource management in food production as an easy win for better food security in the face of climate change. (The Conversation)
ASATA: Application of AI in travel industry coming into focus
#RSA #travel — South African travel agencies are adopting AI to make sense of increasingly sprawling options for booking, and for cost analytics and reporting, according to the Association of Southern African Travel Agents (ASATA). (SA Travel News)
Researchers in Ethiopia get AI training for agriculture
#Ethiopia #agriculture — With the pressing need for better, cheaper and more sustainable food production, researchers gathered for a four-day training course under the auspices of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR). Applications of interest ranged from gene discovery, to post harvest quality management, to improving fertiliser usage. (Ethiopia News Agency)
AI tools needed to address Uganda’s doctor shortage
#Uganda #healthcare - Application of AI to assist in diagnostics, treatment planning and patient monitoring would pay dividends in improving healthcare outcomes in Uganda, which is struggling with a severe shortage of experienced doctors - as well as combating fraud in hospitals. (Monitor)
Data Centres
Hodler & GCL to launch green energy infrastructure in Ethiopia
#Ethiopia #energy - UAE Hodler Investments and China’s GCL Energy Investment have signed a partnership to develop a distributed energy infrastructure in Ethiopia to power AI, blockchain, and other data centres. The project aims to reduce CO2 emissions by monetising flared gas. (Zawya)
[ This newsletter was 100% human edited ]