Johannesburg, South Africa – 03 June, 2025 – Africa’s first multilingual Small Language Model (SLM), InkubaLM, has just achieved a 75% reduction in size, without losing performance, thanks to the brilliance of African AI talent. This milestone marks a leap forward in accessible, efficient AI for low-resource environments across the continent.

The breakthrough came through the Buzuzu-Mavi Challenge, hosted by Lelapa AI in partnership with Zindi, which called on machine learning experts across the globe to compress InkubaLM while maintaining its multilingual capabilities. Over 490 participants from 61 countries responded, with all top winners hailing from Africa, a strong endorsement of the continent’s AI innovation potential.

Why Smaller Models Matter

In a continent where internet access averages just 33% and 70% of people use entry-level smartphones, lightweight AI isn’t a luxury, it’s a lifeline. Smaller models, like InkubaLM, can run on affordable devices, function without constant connectivity, and power real-world solutions in translation, education, agriculture, and customer service.

Meet the Winners

🥇 Yvan Carré (Cameroon): Compressed InkubaLM using adapter heads (add-ons that specialise in specific tasks), quantisation (shrinking the model’s memory needs), and knowledge distillation (training a smaller model to mimic a larger one), making it leaner without sacrificing capability.

🥈 Stefan Strydom (South Africa): Cut down the model to just 40M parameters by trimming vocabulary (removing infrequent words), reducing layers (streamlining the structure), and sharing embeddings (reusing components to save space).

🥉 Team AI_Buzz – Abdourahamane Ide Salifou, Mubarak Muhammad, and Victor Olufemi (Nigeria & Niger): Built a 177M-parameter student model by blending datasets (combining different sources for broader learning) and applying distillation, achieving both size reduction and solid performance.

A Step Forward for African AI

“This challenge isn’t simply about technical progress, it reflects our deeper mission at Lelapa AI: to build AI that is inclusive, accessible, and grounded in African realities. The Buzuzu-Mavi Challenge affirms what we’ve always believed – when AI is designed with Africa in mind, it becomes both technically excellent and deeply transformative. And when African talent is trusted with meaningful challenges, the results are not just outstanding, they’re a glimpse into the future we’re building for and from the continent.” – Pelonomi Moiloa, CEO, Lelapa AI

“It is a joy and a privilege for us at Zindi to partner with Lelapa AI on the Buzuzu-Mavi Challenge. Seeing the impact that our incredible community of AI builders can have on a truly African problem is inspiring and rewarding in its own right, but even better, these solutions showcase what African innovators can do in the language model space. In a world where the state of the art requires ever larger language models, we’re proud to show the world that more can be done with less.” – Celina Lee, co-founder and CEO, Zindi.

What’s Next?

The most promising submissions will inform future InkubaLM releases. But the journey doesn’t end here. InkubaLM remains open-source and available for innovators everywhere. Anyone can explore, improve, and make InkubaLM even smaller, leaner, and more powerful for African contexts.

About Lelapa AI

Lelapa AI is a leading, socially grounded, Africa centric AI research and product lab. We are committed to promoting linguistic diversity and digital inclusion, and develop cutting-edge solutions that empower individuals and communities across Africa.

About Zindi

Zindi is the largest professional network for data science and AI, bringing together thousands of data scientists to solve pressing challenges using AI. With a mission to unlock opportunities in data science and AI, Zindi connects talent with real-world problems to create impact across the continent.

Contact Person

Nhlawulo Shikwambane

Brand and Content Specialist Email: nhlawulo.shikwambane@lelapa.ai

Stay ahead in the world of AI, business, and technology by visiting Impact Newswire for the latest news and insights that drive global change.