FG Launches First Multilingual Large Language Model

The Federal Government, through the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, has launched Nigeria’s first Multilingual Large Language Model (LLM) as the country pushes forward to take a leadership position in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development in Africa. 

The Communications Minister, Dr. Bosun Tijani, who announced this on his official X, said the launch of the LLM was one of the outcomes of the 4-day AI workshop held in Abuja.

According to him, the AI tool was launched through a partnership between a Nigerian AI company, Awarritech, a global tech company, DataDotOrg, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), and the National Centre for AI and Robotics (NCAIR).

“The LLM will be trained on 5 low resource languages and accented english to ensure stronger language representation in existing datasets for development of Artificial Intelligence solutions. 

The project will also be supported by over 7,000 fellows from the 3MTT Nigeria program,” the Minister stated. 

Tijani further disclosed that after the 4-day of co-creation with over 120 Artificial Intelligence experts, the country not only have an initial draft of its National AI Strategy, but also announced some significant developments and partnerships that would lead Nigeria towards accelerating the development of AI.

He said part of the announcements was the partnership between 21st Century Technologies, Galaxy Backbone and and NCAIR Nigeria to accelerate the development of Artificial Intelligence projects of national interest. “21st Century Technology is funding the acquisition of an initial set of GPUs to kickstart our national computing capacity.

The computers which will be available to local researchers, startups, govt entities working on critical AI projects, will reside at the GBB Data centre in the FCT,” he said. At the workshop, the Minister said the NCAIR, a special purpose vehicle created to promote research and development on emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics and UAV, Internet of Things (IoT) and their practical application in areas of Nigerian national interest was also relaunched.

According to him, the improved capacity at NCAIR will help it better fulfill its mandate as a digital innovation and research facility.