AI

In the past week, Kenyan media has been buzzing about Simba AI, touted as “Kenya’s first AI chatbot that understands and translates English into different local languages.”. The May 2025 unveiling in Nakuru, a partnership between Simba AI and Lish AI Labs, was hailed as a technological breakthrough for our nation. But is Simba AI truly the revolutionary Kenyan‑built large language model (LLM) that it claims to be? After extensive research and hands‑on testing, I’ve discovered some uncomfortable truths that Kenyan tech enthusiasts and businesses deserve to know. ...

Picture this: you’re developing an application that needs to understand and respond to users in Swahili, but traditional large language models fall short with African languages. Enter UlizaLlama (meaning “AskLlama” in Swahili), a revolutionary 7B parameter language model specifically designed to excel in Swahili and English, with recent expansions to other African languages including Hausa, Yoruba, Xhosa, and Zulu. When Jacaranda Health launched UlizaLlama in late 2023, they created something extraordinary - the world’s first open-access Swahili-speaking LLM that organizations across Africa could easily integrate into their systems. This wasn’t just another AI model; it was a technological breakthrough designed to make artificial intelligence accessible and relevant to millions of Swahili speakers across East Africa. ...