Called Lelapa AI, the artificial intelligence research lab headed by Pelonomi Moiloa means home in southern Africa's Sotho and Tswana languages - a name that reflects its goal of building algorithms designed by Africans, for Africans.
Lelapa AI is one of a clutch of African startups that aims to offer an alternative to AI systems being built by Western firms such as OpenAI and Google as "digital colonialism" concerns grow about how Big Tech harvests and uses people's data.
"(Data) can be taken from us in the same way material resources were taken from us, processed and sold back to us like before ... (or) used to implement technologies that are able to exploit us further," Moiloa said, referencing AI-powered misinformation campaigns.
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