From Swahili to Zulu: African techies develop AI language tools LAGOS/NAIROBI/JOHANNESBURG – When the Nigerian government announced plans in April to develop a multilingual artificial intelligence tool to boost digital inclusion across the West African country, 28-year-old computer science student Lwasinam Lenham Dilli was thrilled.
Dilli struggled to scrape datasets from the internet to build a large language model (LLM), used to power AI chatbots, in his native Hausa language as part of his final project at university.
“I needed texts in English and the corresponding translation in Hausa, but I couldn’t get anything online; (there was) no clean data,” Dilli said.
