DSFSI 2025 Retrospective (Day 3): From DSFSI to AfriDSAI—Expanding Our Impact
Day 3 of our retrospective: The launch of AfriDSAI with $1M from Google.org marks a new chapter—expanding from language-focused research to continental AI impact.
Day 3 of our 7-day retrospective celebrating DSFSI’s remarkable 2025 journey.
From DSFSI to AfriDSAI: A New Chapter Begins
Some milestones are measured in papers published or datasets released. Others are measured in institutions built—structures that will enable research, train talent, and shape ecosystems for decades to come.
August 2025 brought such a milestone: the announcment of the African Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AfriDSAI) at the University of Pretoria.
This wasn’t a replacement for DSFSI. It was evolution.
🎉 The Launch: Two Years in the Making
On August 3, 2025, we announced the formal establishment of AfriDSAI, catalyzed by a $1 million USD gift from Google.org.
The announcement came after two years of planning, proposal development, and community consultation—supported by the Future Professors Programme and the African Research Funding Accelerator.
Google.org’s announcement: Supporting the Future of AI Research in Africa and Globally
The timing was perfect. AfriDSAI’s launch coincided with the announcement of the Masakhane African Languages AI Hub—the next phase of the Masakhane Research Foundation, a long-time collaborator and community we’ve proudly supported.
Two major African AI institutions launching together. That’s the power of ecosystem thinking.
🌱 DSFSI: The Foundation
Since its inception, DSFSI has been guided by a clear mission:
“Data-driven collaborative innovation to empower society to tackle challenges and preserve our languages.”
Under this mission, DSFSI became one of the most active research groups in African NLP:
- Building tools for low-resource languages
- Producing open datasets (Next Voices, Mafoko, AfroCS-xs, and more)
- Mentoring the next generation of researchers
- Leading global conversations on responsible, locally-grounded AI
DSFSI isn’t going anywhere. It continues to pursue this mission with the same intensity and commitment that brought us here.
🚀 AfriDSAI: The Expansion
So why AfriDSAI?
AfriDSAI is a natural evolution—an expansion to meet growing demand for deeper, broader, and more institutionalized work across the African AI and Data Science ecosystem.
Key Differences:
| DSFSI | AfriDSAI |
|---|---|
| Research group | Institute |
| Focus: African language processing & social impact | Scope: Language + Health + Agriculture + Climate + Governance + more |
| Project-based collaborations | Institutionalised partnerships |
| Faculty, students, postdocs | Faculty, students, postdocs + external fellows + industry partners |
Where DSFSI focuses on language and social impact, AfriDSAI expands our collective reach into:
- Health AI (medical imaging, diagnostics, epidemiology)
- Agricultural AI (crop monitoring, climate adaptation, food security)
- Climate and environmental AI (prediction, monitoring, resilience)
- Governance and policy (AI regulation, ethics, data sovereignty)
All through transdisciplinary, African-grounded research.
🤝 The Partnership with Google
This launch represents five years of partnership with Google University Relations:
- Compute credits that powered our earliest models
- Funding for projects that built datasets and capacity
- Support that helped us reach this institutional milestone
The $1M gift from Google.org enables:
- Fellowship programmes (staff/faculty and student partnerships)
- Infrastructure development (compute, data storage, collaboration tools)
- Community engagement (workshops, conferences, public scholarship)
- Continental collaboration (partnerships across African institutions)
This isn’t just funding, it’s recognition that African-led AI research deserves institutional investment.
🏥 Transdisciplinary Collaboration: A Preview
The recent visit of Prof. Judy Gichoya (Emory University), a leader in medical AI and responsible innovation, demonstrated the power of transdisciplinary work. Her engagement with DSFSI and the broader UP community showed how AI research can bridge:
- Computer Science + Medicine
- Ethics + Engineering
- Global expertise + Local context
Read about Prof. Gichoya’s visit
AfriDSAI is designed to sustain and scale exactly this kind of collaboration.
🌍 What AfriDSAI Enables
- Institutional Stability: Moving from project-based to institutionalized research
- Continental Reach: Partnerships across African universities and research centers
- Talent Development: Fellowship programmes, visiting scholars, capacity building
- Domain Expansion: From language to health, agriculture, climate, governance
- Ecosystem Building: Connecting research, policy, industry, and civil society
📋 What’s Next?
We’re finalising our first AfriDSAI Fellowship Programme:
- Staff/faculty partnerships on transdisciplinary research
- Student support (PhD, postdoc, visiting scholars)
- Industry and civil society collaborations
Subscribe for updates:
Interested in partnering? Get in touch through our website.
💭 Reflections: Growth Without Losing Identity
There’s always a risk when institutions grow: they lose the spirit that made them special.
But AfriDSAI isn’t about becoming bigger. It’s about becoming more effective at serving African communities through research.
DSFSI’s DNA, community participation, ethical data governance, open resources, social impact—doesn’t disappear. It scales.
From DSFSI’s strong roots, AfriDSAI branches out to imagine and build the future of African AI—together, and on our own terms.
🙏 Gratitude
This milestone belongs to many:
- DSFSI students, staff, postdocs, alumni, collaborators who built the foundation
- Future Professors Programme and African Research Funding Accelerator who helped refine our vision
- Google University Relations and Google.org for five years of partnership
- University of Pretoria leadership for believing in this vision
- Masakhane Research Foundation and the broader African AI community for collaboration and solidarity
Tomorrow (Day 4): We celebrate community and collaboration—from Deep Learning Indaba to Global AI Summit and the ecosystems we’re building together.
Related Posts:
External Links:
Stay connected:
- 🌐 Website: dsfsi.co.za
- 🐦 Twitter/X: @dsfsi_research
- 💼 LinkedIn: DSFSI
- 📬 Newsletter: DS@UP on Substack
This is Day 3 of our 7-day retrospective. Join us tomorrow as we explore the communities and collaborations that power our work.
#DSFSI2025 #AfriDSAI #InstitutionalGrowth #AfricanAI