General News
GSMA, Pleias Seek to Close African Language Gap in AI

Pleias and the GSMA have announced the release of CommonLingua, an open-source language identification (LID) model purpose-built to unlock African language data at scale. It is delivered under the GSMA’s AI Language Models in Africa, by Africa, for Africa initiative, a coalition dedicated to closing the African language gap in AI.

Africa is home to more than 2,000 living languages, many of which remain underrepresented in AI training data. As a result, language identification systems often perform less reliably on African-language content, particularly when distinguishing between closely related or code-mixed text. Before a Swahili, Yoruba, or Wolof language model can be built, the underlying text must first be correctly identified by language – a step where existing tools currently often fail on African content.
This is because leading LID systems such as fastText, GlotLID, and OpenLID were built around European and Asian high-resource languages and frequently mislabel African-language text as English or French. Even state-of-the-art frontier models drop roughly 30 points in accuracy on African languages compared to major world languages.
CommonLingua is designed to fix this first step of the pipeline. On the new CommonLID benchmark, CommonLingua achieves 83% accuracy and a macro score F1 of 0.79, outperforming leading LID models by more than 10 percentage points under comparable evaluation conditions, while using roughly one three-hundredth of the parameters. The model is lightweight at 2 million parameters and shipping as an 8 MB checkpoint, and is designed for efficient deployment, running approximately 20 texts per second on CPU and up to 3,000 texts per second on a single GPU.
CommonLingua covers 334 languages in total, including 61 African languages across eight language families: Bantu (21), Niger-Congo / West African (18), Afro-Asiatic and Semitic (7), Cushitic and Chadic (4), Berber (3), Nilo-Saharan (3), and pidgins, creoles, and other (5). The model operates directly on UTF-8 byte sequences rather than relying on a language-specific tokenizer, enabling consistent handling across scripts including Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic, N’Ko, and Tifinagh.
“African languages are not an edge case. They are the working languages of hundreds of millions of people, and they deserve AI infrastructure built with the same care as any other language. CommonLingua is deliberately the first brick we are laying: you cannot curate what you cannot identify” said Pierre-Carl Langlais, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Pleias.
The model is trained exclusively on open-licensed and public domain content aggregated through the Common Corpus project, including Wikipedia, Scientific publications in OpenAlex, VOA Africa, WaxalNLP, Cultural Heritage, and Pralekha. All datasets are released under permissive licenses.
Louis Powell, Director of AI Initiatives at GSMA added: “Closing the gap in African-language AI is is fundamental to digital inclusion and unlocking economic opportunity. Progress has long been held back by the lack of foundational infrastructure, beginning with something as essential as language identification.
“CommonLingua addresses this critical gap, enabling the development of richer datasets and more representative AI systems at scale. Through our initiative, the GSMA is bringing partners together to move beyond fragmented efforts towards shared infrastructure that can power Africa’s digital ecosystem.”
This conversation will continue at MWC26 Kigali, where GSMA and partners will bring together industry leaders to accelerate progress on African-language AI. Register now to be part of the discussion.
General News
NRS Extends Saturday Tax Office Operations Nationwide Ahead of Rev360 Rollout

The Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) has announced the extension of weekend tax office operations across the country as part of preparations for the rollout of the Rev360 Phase I Tax Administration System.

In a public notice issued in Abuja on May 7, the Service stated that all Emerging, Medium, Large, and Government Business Offices nationwide will now open on Saturdays from May 8 to June 27, 2026.
According to the notice, the offices will operate between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.
The NRS explained that the initiative is aimed at providing additional taxpayer support and improving service delivery during the implementation of the new tax administration platform for Medium and Emerging Taxpayer segments.
The Service noted that the extended Saturday operations are designed to assist taxpayers requiring guidance with the new system, facilitate seamless compliance during the June peak Companies Income Tax filing period, and improve access to tax services outside regular weekday hours.
It encouraged taxpayers to take advantage of the initiative to resolve tax-related matters, seek necessary guidance, and ensure timely compliance with their tax obligations.
“The NRS remains dedicated to delivering efficient, transparent, and taxpayer-focused services,” the statement read.
The notice was signed by Zacch Adedeji, PhD, Executive Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service. “You say Transformation, We say Rev360.”
General News
NCS, Gowon University Partner on Research, Development

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Yakubu Gowon University have moved to formalise a strategic alliance aimed at advancing national security research, border management studies, and student welfare.

Comptroller General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, made this known during a visit by the University’s Vice Chancellor Professor Hakeem Fawehinmi, to the headquarters of the agency yesterday in Abuja.
Adeniyi noted that the collaboration marks a significant step in bridging the gap between paramilitary operations and academic research. “I have a long institutional history with this university,” CGC Adeniyi remarked.
He noting that previous attempts to sign a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) were interrupted by leadership transitions and that the Service is now committed to a phased implementation of support, focusing on projects with the highest impact on the learning environment.
Adeniyi said “For us, beyond legacy, what matters most is impact. We understand the realities facing Nigerian universities, from transportation challenges to infrastructure gaps.
“Our interest is to support initiatives that will create a conducive learning environment and positively impact students.”
He also stressed the importance of the university in relation to its status of the nation’s capital u University. He pledged to support the institution in meeting the demands of its 40,000-strong student population.
Responding, Professor Fawehinmi highlighted the university’s Centre for Defence and Migration Studies as a critical hub for the partnership.
He suggested that the centre could provide the NCS with specialised research into national security and executive training for officers.
“Support in areas such as mass transit buses, ICT infrastructure, research facilities, and professional collaboration will significantly strengthen our capacity,” the Vice Chancellor noted, adding that as the only conventional public university in the Federal Capital Territory, the institution carries enormous responsibilities.
General News
CRMI Warns of Risks, Sees Gains in UAE Exit from OPEC

Chartered Risk Management Institute of Nigeria (CRMI) has highlighted potential benefits for Nigeria such as increased production flexibility, expanded market share, and improved revenue prospects following the United Arab Emirates’ decision to exit the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

However, the Institute cautioned that these opportunities come with significant risks, including exposure to price volatility, reduced protection from coordinated supply management, intensified competition, and mounting fiscal pressures.
In a statement signed by Victor Olannye, registrar/chief executive officer, described the development as a major shift in global oil governance, with far-reaching implications for market stability and international energy dynamics.
Olannye noted that the move could trigger increased oil price volatility, heightened geopolitical tensions, and disruptions across global energy supply chains.
He urged corporate organisations, public institutions, financial bodies, and risk professionals to reassess their risk frameworks and strengthen resilience in response to evolving global realities.
He identified key risks to include a potential weakening of OPEC cohesion, oil price instability, geopolitical uncertainty, supply chain disruptions, macroeconomic volatility, and the possibility of further exits by member states.
In line with its mandate to promote sound risk management and support national development, the Institute advised corporate organisations to implement robust risk management frameworks, adopt dynamic hedging strategies, and diversify their business portfolios.
Financial institutions and investors were also urged to reassess energy-related risks, strengthen portfolio diversification, and enhance risk disclosure practices.
CRMI further called on government and policymakers to reinforce fiscal buffers, accelerate economic diversification, and promote the transition to renewable energy.
Individual risk professionals were encouraged to upskill in geopolitical risk analysis and energy economics while developing expertise in scenario planning and predictive analytics.
The Institute emphasised the need for stakeholders to reposition proactively to navigate the evolving geo-economic landscape. It also projected possible scenarios, including fragmentation of global oil governance structures, increased reliance on market-driven pricing mechanisms, and an acceleration of global energy transition efforts.
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