Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy Bosun Tijani unveiled the initiative on Thursday during the opening session of the 7th Ordinary Session of the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) Conference of Plenipotentiaries (CPL-26) in Abuja.

Vice President Kashim Shettima attended the event as Special Guest of Honour.

Speaking at the conference, Tijani said the ATLAS Network builds on Nigeria’s National Artificial Intelligence Language and Translation Alliance (N-ATLAS) and will bring together governments, researchers, academic institutions, innovators and ecosystem partners to develop AI systems that better reflect Africa’s languages, cultures and knowledge systems.

According to the minister, fewer than two per cent of Africa’s languages are meaningfully supported by modern AI systems despite the continent accounting for nearly one-third of the world’s languages.

He said the new initiative expands Nigeria’s existing programme into a continental framework and invited African countries to participate in the collaborative platform.

Tijani also urged member states to strengthen regional cooperation and present a united position on global digital policy.

“Africa must arrive prepared, united and credible. We must continue to invest in technical preparation, strengthen regional cooperation and speak with one voice where our interests align,” he said.

“Where global digital rules are being shaped, Africa must be ready to participate and help shape outcomes that affect our people, our economies and our future.”

Representing Vice President Shettima, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (Office of the Vice President), Senator Ibrahim Hadejia, said Africa must play a more active role in shaping global technology policies.

He noted that Nigeria remains committed to strengthening its contributions within the African Telecommunications Union and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), adding that the country would continue working to ensure African priorities are reflected in global digital governance.

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The introduction of Atlas marks OpenAI’s entry into the competitive browser market, positioning the product as a direct rival to Google Chrome, which currently dominates global browser usage. According to OpenAI, Atlas is designed without a traditional address bar, instead placing ChatGPT at the centre of the browsing experience to serve as a “super-assistant” capable of understanding users’ goals and helping them accomplish tasks seamlessly.

Users can interact with ChatGPT while browsing, allowing for context-aware assistance without switching tabs or copying information between windows. The browser also introduces a paid Agent Mode for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Business subscribers, enabling the AI to perform searches, analyze information, and automate actions based on user activity. OpenAI emphasized that users will retain control of their data, as browser memories and stored contexts can be reviewed and deleted at any time.

Atlas is now available worldwide for all ChatGPT plans on MacOS and is in beta for Business, Enterprise, and Edu users. The company said it plans to extend availability to Windows, iOS, and Android in the coming months. “Getting started is easy: when you open Atlas for the first time, sign in to ChatGPT and bring your bookmarks, saved passwords, and browsing history with you,” OpenAI stated.

The browser’s release comes amid growing competition in AI-driven search and browsing. Google has introduced AI Mode within Search and integrated its Gemini model into Chrome, which currently holds a 71.9% global market share. Analysts believe OpenAI’s move to embed chat in browsing could pave the way for ad-based monetization, challenging Google’s dominance in search advertising.

The launch follows OpenAI’s aggressive expansion in 2025, marked by record funding, high-profile acquisitions, and major infrastructure deals. The company recently announced plans to acquire Windsurf (formerly Codeium) in a $3 billion deal to bolster its developer tools and agreed to purchase Statsig, a product-testing startup, for $1.1 billion in stock. Additionally, OpenAI signed a $300 billion, five-year cloud agreement with Oracle, securing 4.5 gigawatts of computing power to support its large-scale AI models.

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The pledge follows a call to action from Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, who stressed that Africa risks being sidelined by the global AI ecosystem if local languages remain underrepresented.

Speaking on The Y’ello Chair Vodcast: Your Link to the African Continent, Tijani said a collaborative public-private effort was urgently needed to fund academic research into Africa’s many languages. He specifically challenged MTN Group – which operates in 16 markets, 15 of them in Africa – to mobilise resources.

“We like these kinds of partnerships. Challenge accepted,” MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita responded during the vodcast, which was hosted by GSMA sub-Saharan Africa head Angela Wamola on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The discussion came shortly after Nigeria launched the Nigerian Atlas for Languages & AI at Scale (N-ATLAS), an open-source multilingual LLM designed to understand and generate the country’s diverse voices. With over 500 languages spoken in Nigeria, N-ATLAS seeks to digitise and preserve linguistic diversity while creating datasets to power AI solutions in education, health, commerce, and governance.

Developed as a public-private initiative between the Nigerian government and Awarri Technologies, N-ATLAS is part of the broader ATLAS framework, which is open to other African countries. The platform aims to address the representation gap of Africa’s 2,000-plus languages in global AI systems.

“We have to avoid the risk of Africans being a digital underclass,” Mupita said. He added that the digital economy represents the continent’s “best bet” to ensure dignity, hope, and opportunity for citizens.

“The outcomes we want are that people are digitally included, economically included, and that they have dignity. Poverty can include all sorts of indignity, but embracing technology should take all that away,” he said.

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For millions of Nigerians, digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google remain outsiders to daily life. They stumble over names, flatten accents, and mispronounce places with comic clumsiness—“Enugu” becomes “En-you-goo” and “Ibadan” mutates into “Eye-bay-dawn.” Beneath the humor lies a deeper frustration: global technologies still struggle to understand African voices.

That may be about to change. At the 80th United Nations General Assembly, Nigeria unveiled N-ATLAS, the country’s first AI model trained specifically to understand local languages, accents, and contexts. More than just a tool, N-ATLAS promises to give 200 million people a digital assistant that finally “speaks home.”

Behind this milestone are years of planning and collaboration. The project emerged from Nigeria’s Language-AI Initiative, spearheaded by the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAR) in partnership with Awarri Technologies, private contributors, and academics. Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, explained that starting with Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Nigerian-accented English was only the beginning.

“The model places Africa’s voices and diversity at the foundation of AI,” Tijani declared on X. By unveiling it at the UNGA, Nigeria signaled not only its readiness to participate in the global AI conversation but also its determination to shape it.

N-ATLAS-LLM is based on the LLaMA architecture, fine-tuned on over 400 million tokens of multilingual instruction data. It combines speech recognition, transcription, and natural language understanding to deliver fluent responses in Nigerian languages and accents. But its real breakthrough lies not in code alone, but in cultural sensitivity.

Training the model meant overcoming a huge obstacle: data scarcity. While English and French have endless digitized resources, Nigerian languages have comparatively few. Engineers and linguists had to gather radio broadcasts, Nollywood scripts, interviews, and crowdsourced voice recordings. Each sample was meticulously annotated to capture pronunciation, tone, and context. In Yoruba, for example, the same word can carry entirely different meanings depending on pitch. The AI had to learn to “listen” as carefully as a human ear.

Cultural experts also ensured the model could handle slang, proverbs, and colloquial expressions—features of Nigerian speech that often baffle foreign-trained systems. This blending of technical precision and cultural authenticity makes N-ATLAS stand apart from conventional AI.

N-ATLAS is not just a technological feat; it is a statement about identity and representation. For decades, AI systems trained on Western voices have misrepresented or excluded African languages. By prioritizing Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Nigerian-accented English, Nigeria has pushed back against this digital colonialism.

The model’s ability to transcribe radio shows, interviews, and casual conversations helps preserve Nigeria’s linguistic diversity in digital form. It also democratizes access: government portals, call centers, and educational platforms can now operate in local languages, making services more inclusive. For rural communities, students, and people with disabilities, this leap could be transformative.

Already, N-ATLAS is being applied in practical ways:

Government services can deploy chatbots to answer queries in local languages.

Media outlets can transcribe and caption content automatically.

Schools can deliver learning resources in mother tongues, boosting literacy.

Accessibility tools can help people with disabilities use voice-to-text functions.

But challenges remain. Nigeria has over 500 languages and countless dialects. Expanding coverage will demand massive data collection and continuous refinement. Long-term sustainability requires funding, adoption, and trust from citizens and businesses. Global tech giants are also racing to integrate African languages, making it crucial for Nigeria to move fast and build relevance.

Beyond Nigeria, N-ATLAS could seed a continental AI ecosystem. Countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa could adapt it to their own languages, creating a network of African AI systems that reflect regional identities while sharing resources and expertise. This collective approach could challenge the dominance of Western-trained models and ensure Africa is a contributor—not just a consumer—in the AI revolution.

The success of N-ATLAS ultimately hinges on Nigeria’s ability to sustain it. Investment in research, infrastructure, and AI education is critical. More than a technological showcase, N-ATLAS signals an ambition: for Africa to speak, innovate, and lead in its own voice.

By giving AI a Nigerian accent, the country has asserted that its languages and people deserve recognition in the digital age. Whether this becomes a catalyst for a broader transformation depends on how well Nigeria nurtures, scales, and integrates the model into daily life.

One thing, however, is clear: the world is now listening, and for once, it is Nigeria speaking on its own terms.

Shuaib S. Agaka is a tech journalist based in Kano.

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Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, announced the launch in a statement on his X account, noting that the unveiling took place on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York.

According to Tijani, N-ATLAS was developed to put African voices at the centre of artificial intelligence. “Starting with Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo and Nigerian-accented English, N-ATLAS places Africa’s voices and diversity at the foundation of AI. This is the first step in a broader journey to make Africa a contributor and leader in shaping AI’s future,” he said.

The model’s documentation, published on Hugging Face, describes N-ATLAS as a multilingual and multimodal AI system featuring a speech-technology suite with language-specific automatic speech recognition (ASR) models. These capabilities enable transcription, accessibility, and local-language applications.

Potential use cases include chatbots that answer citizen questions about government services in local languages, transcription of radio, TV, and online videos into text with captions, and support for call centres and voice assistants by transcribing Nigerian-accented speech and generating automated responses. It can also summarise interviews conducted in local languages.

The project was built by the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in collaboration with Awarri Technologies and other partners under Nigeria’s language-AI initiative.

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TECH DIGEST- In Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda, a new $5.5 million partnership with e-GUIDE and Atlas AI starts to spur investment in infrastructure for agriculture, energy, and transportation. With a new $5.5 million partnership with e-GUIDE and Atlas AI, The Rockefeller Foundation hopes to promote the construction of climate-resilient infrastructure and hasten economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa.

A ground-breaking digital platform that builds on new research and publicly available data sets covering the intersection of agriculture, energy, and transportation sector development conditions will provide unmatched insight into the well-being of communities by utilizing satellite data and machine learning technologies.

The platform, which will initially cover Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda, will offer policymakers extensive cross-sectoral insight into how new infrastructure development can reduce community vulnerabilities and promote economic opportunities, ultimately assisting efforts to prioritize and sequence investments in these crucial sectors more effectively.

READALSO: Four ways fintech is driving a greener economy

“While data science has been used to improve individual development projects, we haven’t yet unlocked its potential to improve development at a systems level — which is critical, because efforts to drive change in energy, agriculture, and transportation must be integrated in order to make opportunity universal and sustainable,” said Zia Khan, Senior Vice President of Innovation at The Rockefeller Foundation.

“We are excited about the potential of this collaboration to give policymakers, investors, and operators more dynamic situational awareness of local conditions and help them improve those conditions for the people they serve.”

The Rockefeller Foundation, in collaboration with the Colorado School of Mines, Columbia University, University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst, and Carnegie Mellon University, launched the e-GUIDE (Electricity Growth and Use In Developing Economies Initiative) in 2018 as a project to use data science to predict electricity demand in emerging markets that are energy-poor.

“We want to develop tools to measure how infrastructural developments such as roads, electricity systems, and agriculture lead to economic development,” said Jay Taneja, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UMass Amherst, and principal investigator on the project.

“We want to understand which combinations result in the most extensive and fastest economic development, primarily in countries in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Atlas AI, a public benefit technology business based in Silicon Valley, joins e-GUIDE in the initiative. e-GUIDE has successfully used AI to estimate electricity consumption in Africa and measure productive use of energy in Africa’s agriculture sector.

Initiated in 2018 by The Rockefeller Foundation and a group of Stanford University scientists, Atlas AI tracks changes in societal and economic welfare throughout the world using data from a variety of planetary sensors and deep learning AI technology. In order to help difficult policy and investment decisions, Atlas AI has a wealth of experience creating hyperlocal socioeconomic information, predictive analytics models, and software platforms.

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