Benin, Aug. 28, 2024 – The University of Benin (UNIBEN) is partnering OpenBinacle Group to undertake research and development activities in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Translation (MT) to standardise and preserve indigenous languages in Nigerian and Africa.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two parties covers research and development activities, including but not limited to, AI, MT, Machine Learning (ML), Generative AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Deep Learning and Linguistics.
A statement jointly signed by the partners said they would raise an army of AI researchers, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, physicists, anthropologists, software developers, hackers and linguist practitioners to work together with OpenBinacle’s scientists in making OpenBinacle AI and communication tools, a powerful force in diverse fields in Africa and the rest of the world.
This will enable the two parties to invest more in research, education, and training of all currently admitted students, millions of young people between the ages of 15 and 24, students and unemployed youths in these courses in the 36 states and FCT Abuja as well as the Diaspora.
The objective is to ensure that all students in different faculties of the University acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to become the next generation of AI researchers and scientists.
A statement on this was issued by the Vice-Chancellor of UNIBEN, Prof. Lilian Imuetinyan Salami, and the OpenBinacle Group’s CEO and Founder, Mr Emmanuel Gabriel, in Benin City on Tuesday, Aug 27, 2024.
The statement quoted Salami as saying that the “constructive partnership is a welcome development” as the institution is home to the brightest minds in diverse fields around the world.
Salami is the Vice President of Association of African Universities (AAU) with 400 Universities membership and she is also the current Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNU).
Salami added that the vision of UNIBEN is centred on being a globally recognised institution, known for its contributions to knowledge, innovation and societal development.
”Specifically, UNIBEN aspires to be a model institution in teaching, research and community service, striving to foster a dynamic and supportive environment where both students and staff can achieve their full potential.
”The university seeks to produce graduates who are not only academically excellent but also possess the skills, ethics and values needed to make a positive impact in their communities and the world at large.
”Through this vision, UNIBEN will continuously contribute to Nigeria and Africa’s socio-economic and technological advancement by promoting high-quality education and research that address local and global challenges,” declared the vice chancellor.
UNIBEN is currently ranked among the best universities in Nigeria in teaching, research and impact.
As of 2024, according to the Times Higher Education rankings, UNIBEN ranks 9th among Nigerian universities.
“UNIBEN has played a crucial role in the cultural and intellectual life of Benin City and the broader Edo State.
”As one of the region’s prominent and best institutions, UNIBEN has been a hub for cultural activities, public lectures, and scholarly debates. It has hosted numerous conferences and seminars that have brought together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners from across Nigeria and beyond.
”The university’s influence extends beyond academics; it has been a key player in preserving and promoting the languages and cultural heritage of the Benin Kingdom.
”This includes collaborations with local cultural institutions, participation in cultural festivals, and the integration of Benin history and traditions into its academic programmes,” it stated.
On his part, Gabriel explained that OpenBinacle has built several revolutionary technologies such as OpenBinacle Translate (“OBTranslate”), OpenBinacle Wayback machine, OpenBinacle Meet (“OBMeet”), and its satellite projects to bridge communication gaps and overcome more than 2,000 African language barriers in all 54 African countries of the continent and the rest of the world.
He described OpenBinacle Group as a multinational technology company that offers its products and services through container-based cloud computing such as “Platform as a Service” (PaaS), “Infrastructure as a service” (IaaS), “Software as a Service” (SaaS), Big Data, and “Artificial intelligence as a Service” (AiaaS).
Furthermore, he added that OpenBinacle technologies are at the centre of communication, with GPU deep learning-powered modern AI – the next era of computing with GPU infrastructure acting as the brain of computers, satellites, robots and smartphones that can understand the world and its language pairs.
“According to the historical background, the Benin Kingdom, also known as the Edo Kingdom, was established around 1180 AD. Its origins are traced to the Ogiso dynasty, with Igodo as the first Ogiso (king). Over time, the kingdom evolved into a sophisticated and powerful state, marked by its remarkable city planning, advanced metallurgy and rich artistic traditions.
”The Benin Kingdom, one of the most renowned pre-colonial African states, is a symbol of West African heritage and historical prowess. Located in what is now southern Nigeria, the kingdom was an epicentre of culture, power and innovation, especially at its height from the 13th to the 19th century.
”Present-day Benin City, the capital of Edo State, is the direct successor of this ancient kingdom, retaining many cultural and historical elements from its illustrious past. One of the most fascinating aspects of the Benin Kingdom’s technological innovation was its early use of street lighting.
According to historical accounts, Benin City had a form of street lighting long before the concept was introduced in European cities. The achievements in art, metallurgy and urban planning, the technological and architectural feats accomplished by the kingdom strongly suggest the use of sophisticated mathematical principles and required a deep understanding of geometry (an underlying mathematical understanding of symmetry, repetition and proportion).
In restoring Africa’s dignity and the Benin Kingdom’s status as the epicentre of culture, power and innovation in the present day, UNIBEN is therefore excited by this partnership with OpenBinacle and sees it as another opportunity for an impactful contribution towards expanding the frontier of knowledge and leading the fourth (4th) industrial revolution in Africa.
“With OpenBinacle’s major concentration in developing and modeling over 2,000 African languages to meet global standards, the multinational is set and positioned to explore the rich diversity that characterises the linguistic landscape of the African continent, while bolstering research in AI to provide universal access to all knowledge, communication and languages.
“Africa – The cradle of Mankind, is a diverse continent, with thousands of ethnic groups, rich culture, and over 2,000 languages in 54 African countries. 63 per cent of the total Sub-Sahara population live in rural areas, and they all speak over 2,000 languages in these regions.
”An increasing population of 1.3 billion people lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast, 37 per cent live in urban areas, and 63 per cent of people in rural areas do not have access to global markets.
”From the west to the East, and from the North to the South, it’s a whole mishmash of people of different traditions, ethnic groups, languages, and dialects that have outlived the peak of colonisation and even the dawn of civilisation. One of the fascinating features that set the African continent apart is its dynamic collection of diverse cultures.
”This diversity sets the continent apart as a source of pride, but it also brings discord and hinders development.
”Africa sees its economic development slowed down by the language barrier: more than 2000 different dialects! For instance, Nigeria is a culturally endowed country with over 250 ethnic groups and 500 living languages.”
Gabriel stressed that the long-term mission of OpenBinacle is to identify each of these languages, deploy the technologies and AI models to analyse and understand the natural language, allowing for more accurate and effective communication between humans and machines, while preserving Africa’s languages from extinction.
According to him, the goal of automatic translation of free-text and documents from foreign languages into African languages (or between any two languages) is one of the oldest pursuits of AI research at OpenBinacle.
“Our community of scientists are exploiting large datasets of translated and multilingual text to learn translation with statistical models, with a current focus on building and training foundation models,” the founder of the multinational technology company said.
Furthermore, he said, this collaboration is essential to OpenBinacle AI research and the preservation of over 2,000 African languages spoken in all 54 countries in Africa.”
“UNIBEN and researchers from other academic institutions from different backgrounds and areas of expertise can bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the table by collaborating across different fields and industries, researchers can build on each other’s work and make more significant breakthroughs,” he explained.
Gabriel said: ”The University of Benin and OpenBinacle have established an AI partnership that emphasises community, humanism and interdisciplinary collaboration that will benefit the UNIBEN students, young people between the ages of 15 and 24, and unemployed youths in different communities in Nigeria and across 54 African countries and the diaspora.
“Academic institutions and the people of African descent will share a stake in OpenBinacle Translate (“OBTranslate”) and OpenBinacle Meet (“OBMeet”) established in each country in Africa, allowing its community of translators, researchers, mathematicians, software developers, and NLP experts to control the platform independently while training and modeling over 800 trillion language corpus datasets”.
OpenBinacle community of scientists, postgraduate students of the University of Benin (UNIBEN), will foster the OpenBinacle AI research, development, and innovation in Nigeria, develop further its machine translation and Generative AI-powered products and services, which can solve local problems and create new business opportunities in Africa and the rest of the world,” he stated.
Besides, Gabriel, who is the inventor of OpenBinacle technologies and products, said: “It is important to develop a clear ethical framework that guides the development and use of AI systems.
“Our framework is based on core values such as non-discriminatory language data modeling, human safety, fairness, and transparency, and are developed in collaboration with diverse stakeholders including policymakers, industry experts, and civil society.”
He vowed that “no language in Africa will be left behind”, pledging to raise an army of researchers, scientists, and linguists in Africa.
And to promote inclusion and participation, OpenBinacle® Group and UNIBEN will offer prospective students courses in AI, NLP, ML, DL and linguistics, and provide open data for researchers and students at the university who are currently undertaking research or study in the areas of AI and linguistics to provide evidence-based research and analysis in their respective fields.
He explained that certificates would be awarded upon completion of the programmes, adding that the partnership deal provides internship opportunities for students who complete their programmes and the chance to contribute to the corpus dataset of OBTranslate and OBMeet.
Furthermore, the partnership would provide jobs to the graduands through the Hackathon selection process, train teachers with OpenBinacle® cutting-edge technologies to enable the proper dissemination of information to the students as well as proficiency evaluation tests to assess the performance of students and teachers at every phase of the programme, he stated.
He added that, OBTranslate® also known as “OpenBinacle Translate”, is a subsidiary of OpenBinacle Group, a deep learning company that develops online CAT (Computer Assisted Translation) tools, neural machine translation (NMT), and artificial intelligence platforms for languages. OBTranslate, with its resources, is dedicated to modeling and the promotion of over 2,000 indigenous African languages.
He added that OBMeet® also known as (“OpenBinacle Meet”), allows everyone to hold video meetings or conferences online. Everyone can screen share, chat, multi-stream, video call, and record meeting sessions.
”With OBMeet® everyone can route voice traffic over the internet with the flexibility to access the communications option that best suits their business needs. OBMeet®, a subsidiary of OpenBinacle Group, possesses the capability to integrate Africans on a platform where they can easily communicate.
”It supports interactive video and voice communication, document sharing, speech recognition, voice translation, multi-streaming – all in one place.OBMeet® and OBTranslate® has evolved since its first inception in the Spring of 2019.
”Leading us to the development of version 1.1.1 during the Summer of 2020, and is currently in its latest version (2.1.1), with major portions of code that are efficient and easy to maintain,” said Gabriel.
“Presently, we are working towards version 2.5.0, which will denote major changes in the architecture, the components, and ‘neural models’. The new version is tailored to understand a larger dataset of languages on the universal free text and speech translator,” he said.
According to him, OpenBinacle® is aligned with the aspirations of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), the African Union and the Association of African Universities (AAU).
The statement also provided www.openbinacle.com and uniben.edu sites to learn more about OpenBinacle Group and UNIBEN. (GBN)
