National AI Innovation Challenge (NAIC) – Academic & Research Opportunity

The National AI Innovation Challenge (NAIC) 2026 – Academic & Research track is a national AI build challenge for Nigerian university-based research teams, academic AI labs, postgraduate researchers and faculty.

The challenge is centred on N-ATLAS (Nigerian Atlas for Languages & AI at Scale), Nigeria’s open-source multilingual large language model. N-ATLAS supports Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo and Nigerian-accented English, with automatic speech recognition capabilities for voice applications.

The Academic & Research track is intended for teams developing practical AI technologies that contribute to the technical development, evaluation or application of N-ATLAS. Examples include AI developer tools, benchmarks, fine-tuned models, evaluation datasets and natural language processing (NLP) components.

Applicants must select one of three problem statements:

• Developer Infrastructure – tools, SDKs, documentation, evaluation tools and other infrastructure that make N-ATLAS easier to integrate, test, adapt or deploy.

• Voice-First Access – AI-powered voice applications using N-ATLAS’s automatic speech recognition capabilities for services such as education, agriculture, primary health information, civic information and financial literacy.

• Sectoral Fine-Tuning – adapting N-ATLAS to specific Nigerian sectors, including education, primary healthcare, smallholder agriculture, legal rights and civic literacy, and basic financial literacy.

Who can apply

The Academic & Research track is for university-based research teams, academic AI labs, postgraduate researchers and faculty.

Teams must have 2–5 members, including at least one enrolled student or postgraduate researcher and a faculty supervisor. An institutional endorsement letter from the Head of Department or equivalent is required.

The general eligibility requirements state that all team members must be Nigerian citizens or registered Nigerian entities. For this track, the team lead must be enrolled in or employed by an accredited Nigerian university or research institution.

What must be built

NAIC is explicitly a build-only challenge. Applicants must submit a functioning technical artefact that genuinely integrates with N-ATLAS.

Depending on the selected problem statement, this could be software, a deployed system, a dataset, a model or another functioning technical artefact.

Research papers, proposals, presentations, frameworks, methodologies, mock-ups or wireframes without a functional build are not sufficient for submission.

Applicants must also provide evidence of real-world validation through actual users, real data or live benchmarks.

Submission requirements

Applications require:

• A working technical artefact

• Evidence of N-ATLAS integration

• Evidence of real-world validation

• Technical documentation

• A 3–5 minute video demonstration

• Team profiles

• Institutional endorsement

The validation requirements vary by problem statement. Developer Infrastructure submissions require at least two external beta testers; Voice-First Access requires at least 50 documented real-user interactions; and Sectoral Fine-Tuning requires a benchmark of at least 500 examples against the base N-ATLAS model.

Support and opportunities

Applicants can access technical clinics, office hours, N-ATLAS onboarding support, technical resources and university roadshows.

Shortlisted teams may receive N-ATLAS API credentials, compute credits, technical mentorship and support to strengthen their builds.

For Academic & Research winners, the programme lists NCAIR research-lab partnership, N-ATLAS co-contributor credit, Federal Government recognition, publication and model-card support, and inclusion in the national AI researcher registry among the available opportunities.

Deadline

Applications close on 12 October 2026 at 11:59 PM WAT. Late submissions will not be accepted.

Eligibility: Nigerian citizens and eligible Nigerian academic/research institutions meeting the Academic & Research track requirements.

Application: https://ondi.innox.africa/apply/naic/naic-academic-research