MTN Group has pledged support for Nigeria’s effort to build datasets of African languages—an initiative seen as vital for developing large language models (LLMs) that can serve the continent’s 1.5 billion people.
The commitment was made during The Y’ello Chair Vodcast: Your Link to the African Continent, where Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, urged government, academia, and the private sector to collaborate in funding research into Africa’s diverse languages.
Tijani directly challenged MTN Group, which operates in 16 markets—15 of them in Africa—to mobilize resources for the initiative. MTN’s President and CEO Ralph Mupita accepted on the spot:
“We like these kinds of partnerships. Challenge accepted.”
Avoiding a Digital Divide
Mupita emphasized that Africa must avoid becoming a “digital underclass” by ensuring its languages and cultures are represented in AI development.
“The outcomes we want are that people are digitally included, economically included, and that they have dignity. This dignity point for me is very important because poverty can include all sorts of indignity, but embracing technology should take all that away,” he said.
Industry observers suggest MTN’s backing could accelerate the creation of homegrown AI solutions tailored to African contexts, positioning the continent not only as a consumer of AI but as a contributor to the global ecosystem.
Backstory: Nigeria’s N-ATLAS Project
This discussion followed the launch of the Nigerian Atlas for Languages & AI at Scale (N-ATLAS), a multilingual, multimodal, open-source LLM developed with Awarri Technologies.
Designed to digitize and preserve Nigeria’s more than 500 languages, N-ATLAS provides datasets that can fuel AI-driven solutions across education, healthcare, commerce, and governance.
Crucially, the ATLAS framework is open to other African countries, creating a regional platform for local language innovation. With over 2,000 languages spoken across Africa—most of them underrepresented in global AI models—the initiative is viewed as a step toward securing the continent’s digital sovereignty.
Minister Tijani described N-ATLAS as more than a technical project:
“By digitizing Nigeria’s linguistic diversity, this effort places African voices at the heart of the global AI revolution. It is a national commitment to unity, inclusion, and global contribution.”
