Masakhane Awards 26 LINGUA Africa Grants for AI

In Short

• The Masakhane African Languages Hub has selected 26 projects for LINGUA Africa grants.
• The call drew 800+ applications from 64 countries, and 85% came from Africa.
• Projects fall into data creation, model or tool development, and sector applications.

What Happened

Masakhane African Languages Hub announced 26 awardees under its LINGUA Africa grants, a programme focused on African language technology for AI.

The grants follow an open call that attracted more than 800 proposals from 64 countries. Masakhane said most of the applications, about 85%, came from Africa.

The selected projects span three categories. The first is data creation, meaning teams will build and curate datasets and language resources, like text collections used to train AI systems. The second is model or tool development, meaning teams will build language models, benchmarks (standard tests for model quality), and supporting infrastructure. The third is sectoral applications, meaning teams will deploy language tools in real settings and track measurable outcomes.

Examples shared by Masakhane include a Tanzanian Sign Language dataset effort led by Arusha Technical College. Another is HausaNLP in Nigeria, which is building models that capture regional dialect differences, including Kananci, Sakkwatanci, Zazzaganci, and Katsinanci. Masakhane also highlighted health and civic response use cases involving organisations such as the World Health Organization, the Infectious Diseases Institute in Uganda, and Kenya’s Ushahidi.

LINGUA Africa is led by Masakhane in collaboration with the Gates Foundation, Microsoft AI for Good Lab, and Google.org.

Why It Matters

African languages are often under-represented in AI training data, which can make voice and text systems work poorly for local users. Funding data creation and evaluation benchmarks helps close that gap.

The mix of datasets, model-building, and deployments suggests the programme is trying to move beyond research prototypes. If the projects publish open language resources, other African startups and developers can reuse them to build chatbots, speech tools, health messaging systems, and crisis reporting workflows.

Masakhane director Chenai Chair said the response shows “growing momentum” in the African language AI community, and that African languages should not be treated as an afterthought in the AI era.