David Adelani says African languages still need Africa-centric language models
davlanade · x · 2026-08-04
African-language models are still being built from the trenches
David Adelani’s talk at DLI2026 argues that low-resource African languages are still under-prioritized in modern AI systems, and that teams need to build African-centric models instead of treating the continent as an afterthought.
Models and efforts mentioned
- AfroXLMR
- AfriTeVa V2
- AfriqueLLM, a large language model covering 20 African languages
The message is both technical and strategic: language coverage, data prioritization, and model design need to be centered on African users if these systems are meant to serve them well.
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