The Nigerian government’s efforts to grow the country’s IT economy have received a huge boost with the hiring of 500 fellows from Awarri, the firm chosen to build Nigeria’s first Artificial Intelligence.
Awarri, which began in November 2023, has grown to a team of 120 people and has now included 500 data collectors from the government’s effort to help construct Nigeria’s first Large Language Multilingual Model.
Dr. Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, said in a statement posted on his X account on Wednesday: “I’m pleased to witness the expansion of the Awarri team and the engagement of over 500 fellows from our 3MTTNigeria program as data collectors. This is a huge step towards our aim of building a strong tech ecosystem in Nigeria.
In April, following a four-day AI workshop in Abuja, the minister announced the launch of Nigeria’s first LLM.
The Minister stated that the project is a collaboration between Awarri, DataDotOrg, the National Information Technology Development Agency, and the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, with over 7,000 fellows from the 3MTT programme and $3.5 million in funding from multiple partners.
The minister said, “The LLM will be taught in five low-resource languages and accented English to make sure that current datasets for the development of AI solutions have better language representation.” “Over 7,000 students from the 3MTT program will also help with the project.”
“The program started as part of the Renewed Hope agenda, aims to teach 30,000 people twelve technical skills in its first phase. These skills include cybersecurity and software development.”
“President Bola Tinubu has stressed how important the program is as a key part of his government’s plan to create 2 million digital jobs by 2025,” Tijani said.
He thought the project was very important for making Nigeria a net producer of tech talent and building up its pool of technical talent.
