We're building the future of AI in Africa.
Yali Labs is driven by the ambition to advance AI research and real-world impact—starting in Rwanda and scaling across the continent.
Our Story
From a shared frustration to a continental ambition.
In 2024, three visionary minds—Niyibizi Schadrack, Hirwa Gael, and Murwanashyaka Philbert—came together with a shared ambition: to build the first Kinyarwanda foundational model (FM) entirely from scratch.
Frustrated by the lack of AI tools that truly understood the nuances of our local context, we set out to change the landscape of AI for Kinyarwanda. We combined our expertise spanning artificial intelligence, data management, business, and software engineering to build custom tools that would pave the path to our goal.
We identified a critical gap: existing language models failed to capture the intricate linguistic patterns and cultural nuances of Kinyarwanda. This limitation inspired us to develop proprietary solutions that serve the specific needs of Kinyarwanda speakers and set new standards for AI development in African languages.
At the heart of Yali Labs innovation is the Alta Tokenizer—a tool designed to convert Kinyarwanda text into tokens with unprecedented accuracy, increasing the model's ability to resonate with the language.
The Alta Model, a foundational model specifically engineered for Kinyarwanda, is built on transformer architecture to understand unique linguistic patterns.
We exist to bridge the gap, but have evolved beyond our initial mission. Yali Labs now stands at the forefront of a broader technological revolution, focused on democratizing AI access and enabling local talents to create solutions that address specific regional needs. Our work exemplifies how targeted technological innovation can drive meaningful progress in linguistic inclusion and digital advancement across Africa.
