Almawave and the ICT Commission of the Republic of Tanzania sign an agreement for Velvet in the Swahili language

Almawave announces that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Information & Communication Technologies Commission (ICTC) of the United Republic of Tanzania.

The agreement covers the development and introduction of Almawave’s Italian LLM model, Velvet, in its Swahili version – Tanzania’s official language together with English – through the exchange of data, experiences and technologies.

Valeria Sandei, Chief Executive Officer of Almawave, underlined: “This agreement is an important step in our collaborative journey with Tanzania and the entire African continent. The adoption of Velvet – the multi-lingual, multi-modal foundational model we are developing on the Leonardo Supercomputer managed by Cineca – in Swahili, tailored to the country’s needs in full collaboration with local institutions, demonstrates how generative Artificial Intelligence can be a key lever for accelerating digitization, improving public services, and fostering socio-economic development. Our experience in the country, which has developed over recent years through strategically-important projects, and the significant experience in the use of Artificial Intelligence in Government gained in Italy, allows us to enthusiastically tackle this technological challenge.”

Dr. Nkundwe M. Mwasaga, The Director General of ICTC said: “The collaboration with Almawave in making the model will enhance accomplishment of the goal to build a Kiswahili Large Language Model which suite the public sectors in the United Republic of Tanzania through the following areas: Capacity Building — develop professional skills that will support all the development and deployment phases of LLMs in Kiswahili; Data gathering and cleansing – both parties will collaborate in selecting the right data sources, collecting the data and cleansing it to prepare a quality Kiswahili dataset to train the LLM; Share experience on issues related to the project of implementing LLM in Kiswahili; the players will consider allocating reasonable financial and human resources through their budget plans to facilitate the implementation of respective activities; collaborate in project development and implementation of Kiswahili for Velvet LLM; and any future specialized LLM will be built by the possible customers based on a commercial agreement to be defined based on the requirements. The United Republic of Tanzania through ICTC appreciates this collaboraTon with Almawave in building up the Swahili Large Language Model with will facilitate influx of linguisTc soluTons such as real-Tme speech translaTon and grammar collecton tools.”