American tech behemoth, Meta, in partnership with Data Science Africa, has announced the Llama Impact Grant for startups and researchers based in Sub-Saharan Africa.
As part of Meta’s global Llama Impact Grants, this initiative will support innovative projects that harness the power of Llama, Meta’s cutting-edge open-source large language model, to develop unique solutions tailored to the region’s needs.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has more potential than any other modern technology to increase human productivity and creativity, accelerate economic growth, and unlock progress in medical and scientific research. To help realise this potential, we are seeking proposals from organisations and individuals across Sub-Saharan Africa leveraging Meta’s open-source large language model, Llama, for economically and socially impactful projects, focusing on areas such as health, science, and agriculture. The winning proposal will receive a grant of USD$20,000 to help develop these proposals and bring them to market.
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Speaking about the grant, Balkissa Ide Siddo, Public Policy Director, Sub-Saharan Africa at Meta, commented, “We’re still in the early days, but AI is likely to fundamentally change every aspect of our lives—spurring innovation, turbocharging growth, and driving an explosion in learning and productivity. At the forefront of this transformation are open source AI models, like Meta’s Llama, which are available for free for organizations to use, modify, and build on. Through this grant program, we’re hoping to support and scale AI-driven solutions across Africa that use our open source model Llama to address the continent’s unique social and economic challenges, empowering innovators to drive meaningful impact across the region.”
Meta’s family of Llama AI models has been downloaded more than over 1 billion times globally. Meta’s Llama models, including the latest Llama 3.3, are open source, meaning they are available for free for organizations to use and develop on, making this critical technology more accessible than commercial models. We’ve seen businesses of all sizes employ Llama to create innovative new products and tools that benefit individuals, society, and the economy—from localizing educational material to increasing access to medical information in low-resource communities.
The Llama Impact Grant for Startups and Researchers is part of Meta’s broader Llama Impact Grants program, which launched in October 2023. This global initiative looks to source innovative use cases of Llama, Meta’s open source AI models, to address critical global challenges in areas like education and open innovation.