ALX, Anthropic, and the Government of Rwanda have initiated a partnership to integrate advanced AI into African education, leveraging Chidi, an AI-powered learning companion built on Anthropic’s Claude language model. This collaboration aims to transform learning and teaching across the continent.

• The initiative represents one of the largest AI-enhanced education deployments in Africa, building on a successful Phase 1 where Chidi recorded over 1,100 conversations and 4,000 chats in 48 hours.
• The pilot program in Rwanda will train up to 2,000 educators and civil servants through ALX’s AI Career Essentials program, providing hands-on exposure to generative AI tools like Claude Pro and Claude Code.
• Fred Swaniker, Founder and CEO of ALX, emphasized that this collaboration ensures Africa’s youth become creators, not just consumers, of AI.

Microsoft has launched "Project Gecko," a new artificial intelligence initiative designed for the "global majority," starting with Kenya. This project aims to address equity gaps in AI by developing cost-effective, tailorable systems that incorporate local languages, culturally relevant knowledge, and multi-modal interactions for communities often under-represented online.

• The initiative's core is the MultiModal Critical Thinking Agent (MMCTAgent), an AI system now available on Azure AI Foundry Labs with open-source code on GitHub.
• Agriculture is the initial focus in countries like Kenya and India, where AI is being developed to assist millions of smallholder farmers using local languages such as Kiswahili, Kikuyu, and Kalenjin.
• Project Gecko leverages Digital Green's FarmerChat and has developed new tools for automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech for languages like Swahili, Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Dholuo, Maa, and Somali, using a dataset of 3,000 hours of crowd-sourced Kenyan speech.

Citi has launched new artificial intelligence tools in its Sub-Saharan African operations, with Kenya being one of the first markets to gain access. This rollout provides over 200 Kenyan employees with generative AI systems to automate routine processes, accelerate decision-making, and enhance data insights, focusing on internal productivity rather than consumer-facing applications.

• Over 200 Kenyan employees gain access to AI tools leveraging established LLMs like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok within secure enterprise frameworks.
• The global deployment extends these tools to over 150,000 employees across 80 markets, marking one of the largest AI deployments by a global bank.
• According to Martin Mugambi, CEO of Citi Kenya, this initiative aims to create the industry's first truly AI-ready workforce, freeing staff for more strategic work and improving client engagement.