When the Nigerian government announced plans in April to develop a multilingual artificial intelligence tool to boost digital inclusion across the West African nation, 28-year-old computer science student Lwasinam Lenham Dilli was thrilled. Dilli had struggled to scrape datasets from the internet to build a large language model (LLM), used to power AI chatbots, in his native Hausa language as part of his final-year project at university. "I needed texts in English and their corresponding translation in Hausa, but I couldn't get anything online; (there was) no clean data," Dilli said.

Nigeria's president has ordered an investigation into a military drone strike that killed at least 85 people who were celebrating the Muslim holiday of Maulud. The Army says troops "wrongly analysed" the group's activities and mistook them for bandits.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Emergency response officials said at least 85 people have been confirmed dead after a "mistaken" army drone attack on a religious gathering in northwest Nigeria. The victims were killed Sunday night by drones "targeting terrorists and bandits" in Kaduna state's Tudun Biri village, according to government and security officials. They were observing a Muslim holiday.

As we enter the age of advanced technological breakthroughs such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Nigeria cannot be left out in harnessing the advantages …

Initially conceived as a technology that could mimic human intelligence, AI hasn't quite achieved this feat but significant progress has been made.

This appears to be the first confirmed use of drones by an extremist group in Africa, according to the World of Drones project run by the Washington-based New America think tank. Its section on non-state actors notes that Libyan rebels are reported to have used drones for surveillance in that chaotic North African nation.

The Nigerian government has approved the establishment of a new agency for robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) as the country begins work on a strategic policy blueprint to commit more resources to research in science and technology. Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya, announced over the weekend, at a political rally of the All Progressives Congress in Abakaliki, capital of Ebonyi state that the agency has been given the official nod by President Muhammadu Buhari. The new agency to be set up in the south east of Nigeria, probably in Abakaliki or Enugu, according to insiders in the ministry of Science and Technology, would leverage collaborations with international research bodies on robotics and AI. It will enabled research and teachings in more complex technology skills to thousands of young people. "The ultimate goal is to have an agency mandated solely on advancing our knowledge and usability of robots and AI across sectors in Nigeria. The idea is to leapfrog our growth" said a source at the presidency.