SA AI startups win Meta, Data Science Africa’s Llama Impact Grant

Meta, in partnership with Data Science Africa, has announced the winners of the 2025 Llama Impact Grant for Startups and Researchers at the UN General Assembly’s Unstoppable Africa event.
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The programme, launched in March 2025, forms part of Meta’s global Llama Impact Grants initiative. It supports startups and researchers across Sub-Saharan Africa in applying Meta’s open-source large language model, Llama, to address regional challenges in healthcare, education, agriculture and digital accessibility.

Each winner receives $20,000 (about R360,000) in funding, along with technical mentorship, networking opportunities, and engagement with policy and ecosystem stakeholders.

The winners

  • Vambo AI (South Africa): Building multilingual AI infrastructure across 60+ African languages, enabling translation, transcription, generation and search tools to advance digital inclusion.
  • PropelMapper (South Africa): Developing AI tools for agriculture advisors, including farmer-focused podcasts, report generation and satellite imagery analysis to improve food security.
  • Radease (Nigeria): Using WhatsApp-based AI tools to expand access to safe medicines and health information through local medicine vendors in underserved communities.
  • TeenApp (Uganda): A digital health solution from Makerere University delivering youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health education guided by responsible AI principles.
  • Easy Read Africa (Rwanda): Simplifying complex documents into text, visuals and audio to improve accessibility for people with cognitive and learning challenges.

Sherry Dzinerova, Meta’s director of Amet public policy, programmes, campaigns and product, said the entries reflected the “vibrant and growing AI ecosystem across Africa” and highlighted the potential of open-source models to drive impact.

Context

Meta’s Llama models have been downloaded more than one billion times globally. The latest version, Llama 3.3, remains open source, allowing organisations to use and adapt it freely.

The Llama Impact Grant was first launched in 2023 to identify and scale innovative applications of AI. Since then, it has drawn more than 800 applications from over 90 countries, with previous African finalists including Digital Green’s Farmer Chat and Jacaranda Health’s PROMPTS for maternal health.


 
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