AI for Good: Lacuna Fund Grantees Make a Splash in Global Press

Lacuna Fund – a Meridian project – brings the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) to low- and middle-income communities across the globe. It supports grantees in the domains of agriculture, language, health, and climate to create machine-learning datasets that serve urgent problems in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These trailblazing grantees are creating openly accessible datasets that will reduce bias, increase accuracy, and ensure all communities are represented in data.

In the world beyond Lacuna Fund, grantees are doing amazing work. Explore the AI ecosystem that extends beyond Lacuna Fund and how so many grantees are making an impact on the global stage! Stay up to date on Lacuna Fund news and subscribe to their newsletter.

To Watch

AI as Our Mirror: Exploring Ourselves Through AI Empowerment | Vukosi Marivate | TEDxPretoria

With Lacuna Fund Steering Committee member, Vukosi Marivate

A scientist uses AI to give Africans control of their health

With Darlington Akogo (Lacuna Fund grantee and Technical Advisory Panel Member)

African AI Pioneers: Charting the Course for Innovation and Impact — Applied Machine Learning Days Panel Session

With Vukosi Marivate and Darlington Akogo 

To Read

• MIT Technology Review: This company is building AI for African languages | With Lacuna Fund grantee Jade Abbott and SC Member Vukosi Marivate
• Science: AI often mangles African languages. Local scientists and volunteers are taking it back to school | Science | AAAS (PDF Version) | With multiple Lacuna Fund grantees and community members
• GatesFoundation: How CEMA’s Epidemiological Modeling Impacts Health in Kenya | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | With Lacuna Fund Steering Committee Member Shikoh Gitau
• data.org:  Filling Agricultural Data Gaps Gives Farmers and Organizations Access to Powerful Tech – data.org | With Lacuna Fund “Eyes on the Ground” Agriculture Grantee Team
• International Development Research Centre (IDRC): Creating transformational impact: Lacuna Fund enables local AI solutions by filling data gaps in Africa | With Lacuna Fund language and agriculture grantees
• Google Keyword: Closing data gaps with Lacuna Fund (blog.google)

Explore More

These organizations and initiatives are represented by several Lacuna Fund grantees and community members and are on the same mission to share the benefits of AI with all. If you want to learn more about this space, these are great Lacuna Fund-affiliated initiatives to check out!

• Preserving African languages

  • Masakhane — A grassroots NLP community for Africa, by Africans
  • Lelapa AI — Building the best language models in Africa
  • Deep Learning Indaba — Strengthening Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Africa

• Democratizing Data

  • Zindi – A global community of data scientists and organizations solving pressing global challenges with machine learning and data science
  • data.org — Democratizing data, for good
  • Mozilla Common Voice — Making voice recognition open and accessible to everyone and teaching machines how real people speak