A Nigerian startup, Awarri, has picked over 500 fellows of 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) as part of team building Nigeria’s Large Language Multilingual Model (LLMM) project, according to Dr. Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy.
The Minister, who disclosed this on Wednesday, says the 3MTT fellows have been engaged by Awarri to collect data in building the LLMM.
The Nigerian startup Awarri, was established in November 2023 to enable the development and adoption of frontier technology on the African continent, by building lasting technology solutions and creating a brighter future using the power of AI.
To achieve its mission, it developed Nigeria’s first and largest Large Language Model (LLM) based on both text and audio datasets to support the local creator.
“Most NLP and language-based Gen AI solutions are currently based on the English language,” Awari says on its website, “which has far reaching economic and societal consequences such as cultural preservation, data equity and diversity impacts. Awarri is developing Nigeria’s first and largest Large Language Model (LLM) based on both text and audio datasets to support the local creator and developer ecosystem.”
The Minister disclosed the engagement of over 500 3MTT fellows by Awarri on Wednesday, July 24, 2024 via his X handle, emphasizing the efforts and commitment of government to create more jobs for Nigerian youths in the tech industry.
“I’m glad to see the growth of the Awarri team since its launch in November 2023 to 120 staff, with an additional engagement of over 500 fellows from our 3MTTNigeria programme as data collectors, as they build Nigeria’s first Large Language Multilingual Model.
“Looking forward to seeing more companies in the space as we slowly but surely build a technology workforce that will contribute to global AI development,” he adds.
According to the Minister, the engagement once again aligns with the vision of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to create 2 million jobs for Nigerian youths. It also adds to the already existing placements of thousands of the 3MTT fellows.
According to the Minister, Awarri kicked off operations with 100 AI jobs in Ikorodu in November last year. He described the startup as a full-stack offering that ranges from data gathering to model creation and AI application development.
The AI tool, Multilingual Large Language Model (LLM), was launched after a 4-day AI workshop held in Abuja in April, in partnership with DataDotOrg, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), and the National Centre for AI and Robotics (NCAIR).
The LLM will be trained in 5 low resource languages and accented English to ensure stronger language representation in existing datasets for the development of Artificial Intelligence solutions. The project will also be supported by over 7,000 fellows from the 3MTT Nigeria program, the Minister stated.
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