Basic Company Overview
N-ATLAS is a Nigerian African-language AI model built for chat, translation, speech, research, and local-language applications across Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Nigerian-accented English, and growing Nigerian Pidgin coverage. It is positioned as a ChatGPT-style foundation for African languages and cultural context — covering tonal languages, regional accents, everyday speech, and oral usage that global models often flatten or miss.
The product is an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy. It is hosted by the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), a NITDA special-purpose vehicle, and powered by Awarri Technologies, a Lagos-based AI and robotics company founded in 2019 by Silas Adekunle and Eniola Edun. N-ATLAS was launched in September 2025 at the United Nations General Assembly as Africa’s first government-backed open-source multilingual and multimodal large language model. In July 2026 it became the template for ATLAS Umoja, a pan-African expansion with GSMA and founding governments including Nigeria, Kenya, Namibia, Togo, and Benin.
The platform targets developers, researchers, students, educators, SMEs, public-service teams, health and education builders, and communities who need AI that can work in Nigerian languages, keep cultural context, and support voice-first use. Coverage and quality vary by language. Some languages are usable for text and speech. Others remain limited, experimental, or outside the first release.
Products and Services
Multilingual AI text generation in Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Nigerian-accented English
Translation and local-language reasoning for education, governance, health, and commerce
Automatic speech recognition for transcription, captions, call centres, radio, and video
Voice-first tools for users who speak a language fluently but do not write it
Growing Nigerian Pidgin and additional speech coverage from community-recorded data
Multimodal pathway combining text and speech
Related data tools through Awarri, including Langeasy for language data and RootLens for visual data
Open model weights on Hugging Face for research, fine-tuning, and application building
Developer programmes, including the Awarri Developer Challenge, for prototypes built on N-ATLAS
Continental scale-up through ATLAS Umoja / the ATLAS Network
Public-good use cases in education, government services, health information, media, and customer support
Supported languages publicly listed include Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Nigerian-accented English, and Nigerian Pidgin. Nigeria has more than 500 languages, so most are not in the first release. Independent evaluations show gains over the base Llama-3 instruct model, with English still stronger than the Nigerian languages.
Contact Details
Company name: N-ATLAS
Type: Government initiative with private technical partner
Lead ministry: Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy
Public host: National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR)
Technical partner: Awarri Technologies
Key figures: Dr. ’Bosun Tijani; Dr. Olubunmi Ajala; Silas Adekunle
Website: https://ncair.nitda.gov.ng/llm
Address: Plot 790, Alimoh-Abu Street, Behind VIO Yard, Wuye District, Abuja, Nigeria
Phone: +234 817 877 8499 / +234 817 877 8501
Social Media
X (minister): https://x.com/bosuntijani
Hugging Face (NCAIR): https://huggingface.co/NCAIR1
LinkedIn (technical partner): https://www.linkedin.com/company/awarri
Lawrence Orjime is an AI and technology writer at AIBase.ng, covering the latest developments in artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and the companies shaping the future of AI.
With a background in content strategy, SEO, and digital media, Lawrence Orjime combines technology reporting with a strong understanding of what makes information useful and easy to find online.