Facebook parent company Meta on Wednesday, September 25, announced the recipients of the 2023 Llama Impact Grants and Llama Impact Innovation Awards, featuring two Kenyan companies at the top.
Launched in October 2023, the program supports innovative use cases of Llama 2 and Llama 3 (Meta’s AI-tools) that tackle pressing social issues.
Kenyan company Digital Green, in partnership with One Acre Fund, which is one of the Llama Impact Grants winners, will receive $500,000 (Ksh 64,250,000) to support their Farmer Chat Project.
The runner-up, Jacaranda Health, will receive $300,000 (Ksh 38,550,000) for their PROMPTS Program, which aims to improve maternal health in Kenya.
With over 800 submissions from organizations in more than 90 countries, Meta said the program highlights innovative solutions leveraging Llama models to address major challenges in education and the environment, as well as technological innovation.
Projects of Meta Impact Grants Winners
Digital Green’s Farmer Chat project aims to develop a multilingual AI chatbot that provides customized, on-demand agricultural advisory services to small-scale farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Llama model will be fine-tuned using a vast repository of agricultural data to meet the specific needs and contexts of different regions.
Jacaranda Health plans to expand its digital health tool, PROMPTS, which uses SMS behavioral nudges and an AI-enabled clinical helpdesk to empower new and expecting mothers across Kenya, Ghana, and Eswatini.
The goal is to make PROMPTS the go-to resource for personalized maternal and newborn health support throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Llama Impact Innovation Awards
In addition to the Llama Impact Grants, Meta also announced the recipients of the Llama Impact Innovation Awards.
Award winners will receive up to $35,000 (Ksh 4,497,500), including mentorship, partnership opportunities and ad credits, to further their innovative work with Llama.
The award recipients include HelpMum, which has developed an innovative chatbot service that delivers accurate and timely information on vaccination and immunization.
While leveraging Llama 3’s advanced language processing capabilities, HelpMum created Vax-Llama model- an AI-driven and open-source model designed to provide reliable vaccination information.
This open-source model can be integrated into HelpMum’s chatbot service and adopted/used by healthcare organizations worldwide.
At the same time, Tanzania AI Community’s chatbot Twiga which provides teachers with a virtual assistant for generating exams, lesson notes and course materials tailored to the Tanzanian curriculum via WhatsApp.
Twiga uses Llama 3 to generate contextualised educational content to address the shortage of quality resources and the high workload of teachers in Tanzania.
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Flow Informatics’ phosoAI project aims to address food insecurity in Malawi by enhancing a WhatsApp-based chatbot that provides people with real-time information on food prices, availability, and agricultural practices, particularly in rural and urban areas.
The chatbot uses Llama 3 to provide real-time information to users in Chichewa. It also allows voice commands to improve accessibility in low-literacy areas.
Meta is looking to grow Kenya’s tech landscape with an ambitious plan to incorporate Kikuyu and Swahili into its AI chatbot, Llama.
“Llama’s conversational capabilities will then be utilized to deliver comprehensive and practical responses in various languages, including Hindi, Swahili, and Kikuyu,” added Meta.
Meta also announced that applications for the Llama 3.1 Impact Grants are now open until November 22, 2024.
“With applications for the Llama 3.1 Impact Grants open until November 2024, Kenyan innovators have the opportunity to further leverage AI to solve local challenges, signalling the country’s increasing role in global tech-driven social impact initiatives,” the statement reads further.
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