WAAA WEEKLY AI INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING – 31 October 2026
For AI Academies and Universities Teaching AI With a Focus on Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Week ending Saturday 31 October 2026 | Published by WAAA | www.waaa.academy

Webinar and Podcast Update As indicated in a previous newsletter, we have discontinued our twice-monthly webinars. Articles on the most important and urgent issues are available on Alan Ross's LinkedIn profile, and videos are available on our YouTube channel @AIGrandad999.alanross and on our 10 language channels (e.g. Spanish, French, Hindi, Swahili, Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, Russian, Serbian, Indonesian] where there are now over 25 long and 12 short videos on each channel covering the AI and technology disruptions that will affect your country. We encourage you to view and share these with your networks and to ask them to subscribe so they are notified whenever a new video is uploaded. We have now signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the prestigious Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Sustainable Development (CAISD), based in South Africa, which applies artificial intelligence to sustainable development in Africa. Its work spans agriculture, mining, governance, environment and healthcare, and it works with a consortium of African partner universities and international partners. We have agreed to cooperate so we can extend our activities across the 54 African nations while continuing to support and inform other regions across the Global South. Check out the link below, which shows the recent audio podcast and AFRICAST video podcast that we have done through CAISD. CAISD podcasts and videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9m_MM9O0Mkzw0cKXcswaxw The audio podcast outlines how countries can fund AI adoption, and the in-depth video interview podcasts are wide-ranging, covering important issues of relevance to all countries. Discussions are ongoing, but it is likely that we will do one podcast each month focused on the 54 African countries and one each month for a global audience covering Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as audio podcasts on various topics. The topics and issues discussed, whether in the African podcast or the global podcast, will be relevant for all countries in the Global South This Week's Key Developments A regional sweep of the week from Sunday 25 October to Saturday 31 October 2026, with developments from Africa, Asia and Latin America, plus two global stories with strong Global South relevance. Key points only below; follow the source links for the full story. AFRICA 1. TALENT NATION AIMS TO TRAIN 1 MILLION AFRICAN AI ENGINEERS Iyinoluwa (Iyin) Aboyeji, co-founder of Andela and Flutterwave, has launched Talent Nation, a startup that trains African AI engineers and places them with companies around the world, with the aim of training one million engineers over the next ten years (reported 28 and 29 October). It has raised an undisclosed preseed round co-led by Enza Capital and London-based LocalGlobe, with Future Africa, Kaleo Ventures, Ajim Capital, Solving.org and Accelerate Africa also taking part. IHS Towers is named as a client. Trainees pay nothing upfront. Client companies pay for the engineers they hire, that revenue funds new trainees, and employed engineers later help pay for future cohorts. Candidates take an online test and then in-person trials; the strongest are placed with clients immediately, while others join 3-, 6- or 12-month programmes that combine projects, internships and work experience. Its predecessor, Learn2Earn, has received over 63,000 applications, assessed over 32,000 candidates and admitted about 1,400 fellows (under 3% of applicants) across nine campuses in six cities. In February, Learn2Earn partnered with the Digital Bridge Institute to train AI engineers in support of Nigeria's 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme. No detailed timetable for the one million target has been published. Why this matters for WAAA members: Talent Nation's mix of selection, 3- to 12- month job-linked tracks and placement is a model academies can adapt. Academies can explore delivery or hosting partnerships, and design courses where employers pay when graduates are placed. Sources: iAfrica, 29 Oct 2026; Startup Researcher, 28 Oct 2026 2. SOUTH AFRICA'S REDRAFTED NATIONAL AI POLICY NOT EXPECTED BEFORE MARCH 2027 Jeanette Morwane, acting deputy director-general at the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies and the policy's project manager, told a South Africa–Finland AI dialogue in Pretoria that Cabinet approval to publish the revised policy for public comment is now expected no earlier than March 2027, months later than first promised (reported 31 October). The first draft was gazetted on 10 April 2026 and withdrawn on 26 April because its reference list contained fictitious sources. The drafting team must submit the revised policy and a discussion document to the minister by 30 November, followed by internal government consultations from December to February. A seven-member independent expert panel chaired by Wits University AI researcher Benjamin Rosman has submitted advisory notes, and the government drafting team includes the Presidency, the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation, the State Security Agency and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition. An implementation road map is being drafted in parallel. Discussions centre on compute and data sovereignty and on "model sovereignty", meaning large language models that handle South Africa's official languages. Ms Morwane said significant investment in computing infrastructure is needed. Why this matters for WAAA members: A university researcher chairs the expert panel, showing the role academics can play in national AI policy. Academies elsewhere can offer experts to their own governments, and should teach responsible use of AI in research, including checking every citation. Source: iAfrica, 31 Oct 2026 3. LESOTHO DEVELOPING AN AI CHATBOT TO ADVISE FARMERS Lesotho's Minister of Information, Communications, Science, Technology and Innovation, Nthati Moorosi, announced at the opening of the third National Science, Technology and Innovation Week in Maseru that the government is building an AI chatbot to give farmers easier access to agricultural information and advice (reported 26 October). It is being developed with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition. The government is also upgrading high-performance computing at the Mohale's Hoek Data Centre, and a Research and Innovation Policy is awaiting approval. No launch date, languages or number of farmers to be served have yet been announced. Why this matters for WAAA members: The chatbot will need agricultural experts, data specialists and local-language content. Academies and agricultural colleges can help build and test the knowledge base, and train extension workers to use the tool. Source: iAfrica, 26 Oct 2026 4. HONEYWELL LAUNCHES INDUSTRIAL AI AT NIGERIA'S DANGOTE REFINERY Honeywell has launched Forge Plant Cognition, a new industrial AI platform built on NVIDIA and Dell Technologies capabilities, at the Dangote refinery in Lekki, Nigeria (reported 31 October). The platform is designed to improve productivity and profitability in complex industrial plants. Based on preliminary data, Honeywell estimates benefits of more than 29 US cents per barrel, or roughly US$60 million a year in gross operational benefits at full-capacity throughput. The estimate is not guaranteed and excludes implementation costs. The refinery's nameplate capacity is 650,000 barrels per day, and Honeywell is helping Dangote expand it to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2028. Why this matters for WAAA members: Industrial AI needs engineers who understand both plant operations and data. Academies and engineering faculties can develop courses in industrial data, predictive maintenance and process optimisation together with industry partners. Source: iAfrica, 31 Oct 2026 ASIA 1. INDIA'S 10,000-GPU TENDER FOR SHARED AI COMPUTE CLOSES India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), under the Ministry of Electronics and IT, closed submissions on 29 October and was scheduled to open technical bids on 30 October in its IndiaAI Mission tender to empanel providers of up to 10,000 AI compute units (GPUs, TPUs and other accelerators) over five years. It follows Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's announcement on 11 October that 10,000 more GPUs would be added to the mission's shared compute pool. Clusters of 4,000, 1,000 or 512 units must each be housed in a single data centre in India, for model training, fine-tuning, inference and other AI workloads. Intended users include ministries and departments, academia, research institutions, startups and industry. Reports of the minister's announcement say 3,000 units are reserved for government and public-interest work and 7,000 offered to companies. More than 38,000 GPUs have already been added to the IndiaAI compute platform through earlier rounds and offered at subsidised rates, although startups and enterprises still report waits of several months for high-end capacity. Why this matters for WAAA members: Academia is a named user of the shared pool. Indian universities and academies should prepare research and training projects that can use subsidised GPUs, and academies in other countries can press their governments for similar shared access. Sources: Elets CIO, 30 Oct 2026; MediaNama, 13 Oct 2026 2. INDIA'S BIHAR STATE APPROVES ITS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE POLICY 2026 The Cabinet of Bihar approved the Bihar Artificial Intelligence Policy 2026 on Wednesday 28 October to promote AI-based governance, innovation and digital enterprises. Additional Chief Secretary Arvind Chaudhary said it offers financial incentives for AI companies, global capability centres, startups and digital enterprises, including capital investment and interest subsidies, support for cloud computing, lease rental and electricity charge support, employment generation incentives and SGST reimbursement. The policy also promotes AI applications in agriculture, healthcare, education, manufacturing and urban services. At a review of the draft policy on 22 October, the state government set a target of AI training for 500,000 (5 lakh) students over five years, with a major AI event each year for the next five years. Why this matters for WAAA members: AI training for 500,000 students in five years will need many training partners. Academies in Bihar and across India should position themselves as delivery partners now; this is also a strong opening for WAAA State Coordinators in India. Sources: UNI India, 28 Oct 2026; NewKerala, 22 Oct 2026 LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN 1. MICROSOFT BACKS LATAM GPT, THE REGION'S OPEN LANGUAGE MODEL Microsoft and Chile's National Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA) have signed a two-year memorandum of understanding to support Latam GPT, the first large open language model created in and for Latin America and the Caribbean (announced 28 to 29 October). It was signed by Juan Lavista Ferres, Microsoft corporate vice president, chief data scientist and director of its AI for Good Lab, and Álvaro Soto, director of CENIA. In the first phase Microsoft will provide US$250,000 in Azure cloud credits, usable until February 2027, for Latam GPT's computing infrastructure and operations, together with joint research and technical support from its AI for Good Lab. The partners will also develop joint case studies in education, public services and health. Latam GPT, presented in February 2026, was built with more than 300,000 million tokens of Spanish and Portuguese text, with around 60 institutions from 15 countries taking part. Its promoters say Spanish and Portuguese make up only about 4% and 2% of the data used to train large AI models. The agreement supports development; it is not yet a finished application for businesses or users. Why this matters for WAAA members: An open model means institutions can build on it, not just use it. Universities and academies can contribute data, adapt Latam GPT for local needs and use it in teaching, including in the planned education case studies. Sources: CENIA, 29 Oct 2026; TeleSemana, 30 Oct 2026; CNN Chile 2. MEXICO TECH WEEK 2026 PUTS AI AT THE CENTRE The fourth Mexico Tech Week is running from 26 October to 1 November 2026 across Mexico City, with more than 500 events and about 30,000 expected attendees. Tecnológico de Monterrey is the strategic partner. AI activities include an AI House dedicated to AI and business applications, and the AI for Corporates Challenge, a competition in which AI startups present solutions to real company problems. On 27 October the AI House brought together investors from SoftBank, Kaszek and General Atlantic to discuss AI investment and funding trends in Latin America. Organisers say they want to show that Mexico can create AI, not only consume it. Why this matters for WAAA members: University partners such as Tecnológico de Monterrey use these weeks to showcase students and research. Academies can organise or join similar tech weeks to place graduates and build links with employers. Sources: ADN40, 13 Oct 2026; DPL News GLOBAL 1. LIQUID AI RELEASES SMALL OPEN MODELS THAT RUN ON PHONES AND LAPTOPS On 27 October, Liquid AI released LFM3, a family of six open-weight models of about 2 billion parameters covering text, vision, audio, combined ("omni") input and decision tasks, all built on one shared base model. The models are available on Hugging Face, the Liquid AI Playground and the Liquid AI API. The main LFM3-1.7B model has a 256,000-token context window and needs about 1 GB of memory at 4-bit precision, so it can run on ordinary laptops and phones. The LFM Open License v1.0 allows free commercial use for organisations with less than US$10 million in annual revenue; larger organisations need a separate agreement. Performance figures so far are vendor-reported, and independent evaluations had not been published at release. Why this matters for WAAA members: Students can now run and adapt capable models on ordinary laptops. Academies can build practical courses around small, local models without paying for expensive GPU time. Sources: Unite.AI, 27 Oct 2026; MarkTechPost, 27 Oct 2026; i-SCOOP 2. TWO IN THREE LEARNERS USE AI CHATBOTS TO PREPARE FOR EXAMS, OXFORD SURVEY FINDS A new Oxford University Press report, Digital Learning: Insights from the Classroom, covering South Africa, Brazil, the UK and Hong Kong, found that 66% of learners use AI chatbots to prepare for exams (reported 29 October). Most learners see chatbots as fair for revision, planning and generating ideas, but not for doing the work itself. Among teachers, 82% use AI chatbots for research, 74% to create resources, 66% for administration and 56% for marking; only 3% never use them. The device gap is widest in South Africa, where 18% of learners reported having no digital device in at least one setting, compared with 13% in the UK and 4% in Brazil. The report summary did not give the sample size. Why this matters for WAAA members: Teachers are already heavy users. Academies can offer short courses for teachers on using AI well for lesson preparation and marking, and on designing assessments that stay fair when students use chatbots. Source: iAfrica, 29 Oct 2026 Not yet a WAAA member? Soon these newsletters and other WAAA benefits will be available only to WAAA members. Join now. Do not miss out! WAAA is building a global network of AI academies, universities and educators committed to sharing resources and jointly developing AI courses, with a particular focus on LMIC countries. We also lobby the UN, the World Bank and governments to implement National AI Entrepreneurship Training Initiatives (NAETIs). Members receive this free weekly briefing, access to our podcasts with CAISD and our AI-agent developer and Global AI Advocates networks, and opportunities to participate in our in-country projects and initiatives currently under discussion. WAAA membership fees are very low, with further reductions for those in LMICs. WAAA membership starts from EUR 50/year, and there are significant discounts for those appointed as WAAA Country Coordinators , plus income-generating opportunities. We are now recruiting country coordinators for each country . If interested go to our website to apply See our website https://waaa.academy for more information. View and share our videos on important issues in 11 languages on our YouTube channels (as indicated in the opening paragraphs) and listen and view our podcasts with CAISD as they give more information thehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9m_MM9O0Mkzw0cKXcswaxw #AIEducation #EdTech #AIAcademies #WAAA #AIforGood #LMICs #AISkills #CapacityBuilding #SmallAI #OpenSourceAI #CAISD #Africa #Asia #LatinAmerica