Dr. Bosun Tijani, the minister of communications, disclosed that 21st Century Technologies and Galaxy Backbone are working together to accelerate the advancement of important artificial intelligence projects for the country.
In an effort to establish Nigeria as a pioneer in the continent’s artificial intelligence (AI) development, the government of that nation has introduced Nigeria’s first multilingual large language model (LLM) through the Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy. Dr. Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, declared on Friday, April 19, that the LLM launch was inspired by a four-day AI workshop that took place in Abuja, the nation’s capital, earlier in the week.
Tijani claims that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the National Centre for AI and Robotics (NCAIR), the international tech business DataDotOrg, and the Nigerian AI company Awarritech collaborated to make the AI tool launch possible. The Minister said,
For the purpose of developing artificial intelligence solutions, the LLM will be trained in five low-resource languages as well as accented English to guarantee better language representation in current data sets. Additionally, more than 7,000 fellows from the 3MTT Nigeria programme will assist with the project. According to Tijani, Nigeria created a preliminary draft of its National AI Strategy and revealed noteworthy advancements and collaborations targeted at advancing the nation’s AI development after four days of collaborative effort with over 120 artificial intelligence specialists.
He said that one of the announcements was about a partnership between NCAIR Nigeria, Galaxy Backbone, and 21st Century Technologies to accelerate the advancement of artificial intelligence initiatives that are important to the country.
GPU purchases will be financed by 21st Century Technology in an effort to increase the country’s computing power. These resources will support AI projects at the FCT’s GBB Data Centre, which will benefit regional academics, startups, and governmental organisations.
Amidst the workshop, the Minister declared the reopening of NCAIR, a specialised organisation established to foster research and development in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and the Internet of Things (IoT) and its pragmatic uses in Nigeria’s principal industries. He said that NCAIR would be better equipped to fulfil its function as a digital innovation and research centre hub thanks to its expanded capacity.
Tijani disclosed that interested parties had contributed $3.5 million in seed money to the National AI Strategy. The financing is provided by UNDP, UNESCO, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Luminate, Lagos Business School, Data Science Nigeria, NITDA, and other organisations within the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, among other international and local partners.
It comprises $2 million contributed to the pilot programme by 21st Century Technologies in addition to $1.5 million in direct funding
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