Awarri, the Nigerian startup selected to build the country’s first AI, has engaged over 500 fellows of the federal government’s ‘3 Million Technical Talent’ (3MTT) programme. The aim is to use the cohort as data collectors in building the multilingual large language model.

The Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, disclosed this on Wednesday, reiterating the government’s commitment to creating more jobs for Nigerians in the tech space.

"This is a landmark initiative that will cement Nigeria's position as an emerging leader in African AI research and development," said Tijani.

“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 multilingual large language model,” he said.

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’.

“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 stated in a post on X/Twitter on Wednesday night.

Tijani announced the launch of Nigeria’s first multilingual Large Language Model in April.

According to him, the AI project was launched through a partnership between Nigerian AI company Awarritech, DataDotOrg, the National Information Technology Development Agency, and the National Centre for AI and Robotics.

“The large language model will be trained in five 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 programme,” the minister stated.

According to Tijani, the 3MTT programme is a critical part of the Renewed Hope agenda, and is aimed at building Nigeria’s technical talent backbone to power its digital economy and position the country as a net talent exporter.

The programme started with 30,000 Nigerians, representing one percent of the three million target. A further 270,000 have been selected for the second cohort and brings the total to 10%.