Meta announces Llama Impact Grant for startups and researchers in partnership with Data Science Africa

Meta, in partnership with Data Science Africa, is excited to announce the Llama Impact Grant for startups and researchers based in Sub-Saharan Africa. As part of Meta’s global Llama Impact Grants, this initiative will support innovative projects that harness the power of Llama, Meta’s cutting-edge open-source large language model, to develop unique solutions tailored to the region’s needs.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has more potential than any other modern technology to increase human productivity and creativity, accelerate economic growth, and unlock progress in medical and scientific research. To help realise this potential,  we are seeking proposals from organisations and individuals across Sub-Saharan Africa leveraging Meta’s open-source large language model, Llama for economically and socially impactful projects, focusing on areas such as health, science, and agriculture. The winning proposal will receive a grant of USD$20,000 to help develop these proposals and bring them to market.

Speaking about the grant, Balkissa Ide Siddo, Public Policy Director, Sub-Saharan Africa at Meta commented, “We’re still in the early days, but AI is likely to fundamentally change every aspect of our lives – spurring innovation, turbo-charging growth, and driving an explosion in learning and productivity. At the forefront of this transformation are open source AI models, like Meta’s Llama, which are available for free for organizations to use, modify and build on. Through this grant program, we’re hoping to support and scale AI-driven solutions across Africa that use our open source model Llama to address the continent’s unique social and economic challenges, empowering innovators to drive meaningful impact across the region.”

Meta’s family of Llama AI models have been downloaded more than over 1 billion times globally. Meta’s Llama models, including the latest Llama 3.3, are open source, meaning they are available for free for organizations to use and develop on, making this critical technology more accessible than commercial models. We’ve seen businesses of all sizes employ Llama to create innovative new products and tools that benefit individuals, society and the economy –  from localizing educational material to increasing access to medical information in low-resource communities.   

The Llama Impact Grant for Startups and Researchers is part of Meta’s broader Llama Impact Grants program, which launched in October 2023. This global initiative looks to source innovative use cases of Llama, Meta’s open source AI models, to address critical global challenges in areas like education and open innovation. There have been over 800 applications from 90+ countries to the global Grants Program since 2023 – with previous finalists including:

• Digital Green’s Farmer Chat project, which aims to develop a multilingual AI chatbot that provides customized, on-demand agricultural advisory services to small-scale farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Llama is being fine-tuned on a vast repository of agricultural data to adapt the model to the specific needs and contexts of different regions. Llama’s conversational capabilities will then be used to provide comprehensive and practical responses in a variety of languages including Hindi, Swahili, and Kikuyu.
• Jacaranda Health, which aims to expand its digital health tool called PROMPTS that uses SMS behavioral nudges and an AI-enabled clinical helpdesk to empower new and expecting mothers across Kenya, Ghana, and Eswatini to seek and connect with the right care at the right time. The ultimate goal is to make PROMPTS the go-to resource for personalized maternal and newborn health support across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

1. Clear description of an application with a compelling use case that makes use of Llama
2. Clear path to impact and large potential user base for the solution
3. Team composition and expertise
4. Ethical product development
5. Realistic budget and timeline

Interested applicants are encouraged to submit their proposals via the online application portal before the submission deadline on April 18, 2025. For more details on how to apply, visit [link].