Hi Ayodele here,

Over the past week, Africa’s AI landscape saw major steps forward. Smart Africa launched a new continental AI Council led by heads of state, Cassava and The Rockefeller Foundation partnered to give NGOs access to AI computing power, and ALX, Anthropic, and Rwanda introduced Chidi, an AI learning companion for students and teachers. Together, these developments highlight growing coordination, stronger infrastructure, and deeper investment in AI skills across the continent.

Let us get into it. In this edition:

• ALX, Anthropic & Rwanda Launch “Chidi” AI Learning Companion

• Cassava and Rockefeller Foundation expand AI computing access for African NGOs

• Smart Africa launches Africa AI Council to drive continental strategy

Around Africa

Smart Africa launches Africa AI Council to drive continental strategy

Smart Africa’s Board has officially launched the Africa Artificial Intelligence Council, chaired by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and made up of heads of state, development partners, and private-sector leaders.

The Council will drive continental coordination on AI in areas like infrastructure, data, governance, and talent development. Its creation followed a rigorous process involving over 400 nominations from African governments, academia, civil society, and industry. With a focus on “AI for Africa, by Africa,” the Council aims to ensure AI benefits are distributed equitably. The Council’s agenda includes developing actionable policies and promoting Africa’s digital sovereignty. Leadership intends to align AI development with the continent’s social and economic priorities.

Why it matters

This body signals a unified, Africa-led effort to influence the future of AI , not just adopt it, but allows for setting a course for sustainable innovation rooted in African values.

Cassava and Rockefeller Foundation expand AI computing access for African NGOs

Cassava Technologies and The Rockefeller Foundation are partnering to provide AI computing capacity to NGOs across multiple African countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.

The initiative taps into Cassava’s GPU-as-a-Service infrastructure powered by NVIDIA, giving nonprofits the compute power needed to build AI-driven tools. The collaboration aims to support social-sector projects like agriculture, health, and education by providing local data centres to reduce reliance on foreign cloud providers. Organizations such as Digital Green and Jacaranda Health are early beneficiaries, building AI tools for real-time farmer advice and maternal care. The compute access enables them to train and deploy AI models that are tailored to local data, languages, and challenges.

Why it matters

By democratizing access to high-performance AI infrastructure, this partnership empowers African NGOs to develop solutions that directly address local needs while building an inclusive AI ecosystem.

ALX, Anthropic & Rwanda Launch “Chidi” AI Learning Companion

ALX, Anthropic, and the Government of Rwanda unveiled Chidi, an AI-powered learning companion built on Anthropic’s Claude model, designed to support both students and educators across Africa. Chidi acts like a tutor, guiding learners through inquiry-based conversations to foster critical thinking and problem-solving.

The initiative will train up to 2,000 Rwandan teachers and civil servants on how to integrate Chidi into education and administrative workflows. ALX will scale deployment beyond Rwanda, offering Chidi to hundreds of thousands of young professionals and graduates across Africa. Participants in the pilot will receive a year of access to Claude tools like Claude Pro and Claude Code.

Why it matters

This partnership builds AI literacy at scale, transforming education systems and preparing a future-ready workforce equipped to lead Africa’s AI economy.

Around the world

Google Launches Gemini 3 with Coding App and Record Scores

Google has unveiled Gemini 3, its most advanced AI model to date, along with a new coding interface called Google Antigravity for agentic development. Gemini 3 hit record benchmark scores of 37.4 on the “Humanity’s Last Exam” and strong showings on WebDev Arena and other coding-focused tests. The coding app integrates a prompt window, code editor, terminal and browser to let developers build and validate systems. The model is live now in the Gemini app and through Google AI Studio and Vertex AI.

OpenAI Introduces Group Chats in ChatGPT

ChatGPT now supports group chats, allowing up to 20 people, including the AI, to collaborate in a single conversation. Users can start a group chat via the “people” icon in the app and share a link to invite others. ChatGPT chooses when to speak and when to stay silent based on the conversation flow, and it supports emoji reactions and profile-picture context. The new feature is enabled for Free, Go, Plus and Pro tiers and uses GPT-5.1 Auto under the hood. Importantly, group chats are excluded from the AI’s memory system and do not contribute to personalized model behavior.

OpenAI Releases “ChatGPT for Teachers” Edition

OpenAI has launched ChatGPT for Teachers, a specialized version of its tool designed for K-12 educators and school leaders. The workspace offers secure class-friendly features, allowing teachers to build quizzes, revise lesson plans and guide students with AI-assisted tools. Verified U.S. teachers and school districts get free access through June 2027. OpenAI says it will support curriculum development, student engagement and professional development with this tailored version.

Around the Web - Top Picks

• Safer Chatbots & Smarter AI Models

  Andrew Ng responded to an 18-year-old worried that AI will advance so quickly there’ll be no meaningful work left. His message: AI is powerful, but far from replacing humans. Models still need extensive customization, context, and feedback, and many tasks remain beyond their reliability.

  Hype exaggerates AI’s abilities, causing young people to think coding or entering the field is pointless. But AGI is still decades away, and real-world applications will continue to depend on human expertise. Despite concerns that frontier models will wipe out app-layer startups, many valuable, specialized use cases won’t be displaced soon.

  Read the full article: Safer Chatbots & Smarter AI Models

• Rethinking Product-Market Fit for AI Startups

  At TechCrunch Disrupt, investors shared new advice for AI founders: traditional PMF metrics don’t always apply because AI adoption evolves rapidly. Murali Joshi of Iconiq suggests tracking “durability of spend” Qualitative feedback still matters: interviews with execs can reveal how deeply AI integrates into workflows. Founders should also monitor classic engagement metrics like daily, weekly, and monthly active users. Importantly, achieving product-market fit in AI is a process, not a destination. Startups must learn to iterate and adapt continuously.

  Read the full article: Rethinking Product-Market Fit for AI Startup

Seen This?

Upcoming African AI Events

Kwara AI Summit
Date: November 27-28, 2025
Location: Ilorin, Kwara
Theme: The goal is to show how Artificial Intelligence can make life better for everyday people, helping farmers produce more, improving public services, and opening new doors for young people in the digital economy.
Link: KwaraAISummit

IndabaX AI Workshops and Hackathons
Date: November 2025
Location: Various African countries (Uganda, Ghana, Zimbabwe)
Theme: Community-led events affiliated with the Deep Learning Indaba, aimed at spreading practical AI skills at the grassroots. These workshops and hackathons foster local innovation and strengthen Africa’s AI talent pipeline

NeurIPS 2025 – Black in AI Workshop
Date: December 2025
Location: Global (with African researchers’ participation)
Theme: Highlighting Africa’s growing presence on the global AI research stage, the Black in AI workshop at NeurIPS 2025 provides a platform for African scholars to present research, network with peers, and advance inclusive AI innovation

AI Job Opportunities

• TeKnowledge - AI Benchmark and Evaluation Engineering, Nigeria 

• Kocho - AI Engineer, South Africa

• Hitch Pay - Data Engineer Intern, Nigeria 

• Lumenalta - AI Engineer (Remote), South Africa 

• Glovo - Data Analyst, Nigeria 

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