FATE Foundation has announced that it has sealed a multi-country partnership with the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), supported by Google.org with $4 million in funding. The organisation disclosed this in a statement issued yesterday, describing the partnership as a step toward strengthening artificial intelligence capacity across Africa.
According to the statement, the funding aligns with Google.org’s focus on knowledge, skills and learning and will support the launch of the Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) Upskilling Programme. FATE Foundation said the initiative is designed to build a sustainable and scalable ecosystem for advanced AI education across higher educational institutions in four countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
It said that over the next three years, the Advanced AI Upskilling Programme aims to equip more than 30,900 students with advanced AI skills, enabling them to contribute to technological innovation across the continent. The foundation explained that this will be achieved by supporting higher educational institutions through sub-grants and by adopting a train-the-trainer model.
The programme is expected to directly impact at least 30 higher educational institutions across the four target countries. It will empower 292 lecturers and teaching assistants, referred to as AI Champions, with the knowledge, skills and tools needed to train the next generation of AI talents. These trainees will mainly be penultimate and final year STEAM students, the statement said.
FATE Foundation noted that the core curriculum is built around the Google DeepMind AI Research Foundations Curriculum. The curriculum comprises eight specialised courses, including Build Your Own Small Language Model, Represent your Language Data, Design and Train Neural Networks, Discover your Transformer Architecture, Finetune your Model, Align Your Model, Accelerate Your Model and a Capstone focused on real-world impact.
“These courses will be thoughtfully localized for each country’s context, providing a rigorous and locally mentored educational experience,” the statement said.
Head of Google.org EMEA, Liza Ateh, said: “At Google, we are committed to building a safe, inclusive digital future. This commitment starts with investing in the talent of our next generation of leaders across Africa. This funding will empower local non-profit organizations and academic partners to deliver critical skilling programs.”
The partners said the programme will strengthen collaboration between universities, researchers and industry players, while improving access to AI training within African academic systems over time.
Executive Director of FATE Foundation, Adenike Adeyemi, said: “We are proud to partner with the African Institute of Management Sciences on the Advanced AI UpSkilling Project, with support from Google.org. This initiative responds to the need for deep AI competencies in Africa, empowering tertiary institutions, lecturers, and students in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa globally.”
