Awarri, the startup that has been chosen to create Nigeria’s first artificial intelligence, has engaged 500 fellows from its 3 Million Technical Talent program, significantly bolstering the Nigerian government’s efforts to grow the nation’s tech sector.
Having been established in November 2023, Awarri presently has 120 employees and it has just added 500 data collectors from the government initiative to aid in the creation of Nigeria’s first Large Language Multilingual Model.
“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,” stated Dr. Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, in a statement published on his X account on Wednesday.
Following a four-day AI workshop in Abuja, the minister announced in April the launching of Nigeria’s first LLM program.
According to the Minister, approximately 7,000 fellows from the 3MTT program and $3.5 million in funding from other partners have contributed to the initiative, which is a partnership between Awarri, DataDotOrg, the National Information Technology Development Agency, and the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.
“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 stated.
He considered the project as crucial for strengthening Nigeria’s technical talent pool and placing the country as a net exporter of tech expertise.
