Tech company Orange, a major player in French telecommunications, intends to employ artificial intelligence models developed by OpenAI in supporting African languages.
Orange Fine-Tunes OpenAI's AI Models for African Languages
France-based telecom giant Orange is making strides in its initiative to fine-tune OpenAI's AI models for African languages. The company, which operates in 18 African countries, started this journey last year when it signed an agreement with OpenAI, granting early access to experimental AI models.
Earlier this year, Orange began using OpenAI's Whisper speech model for African languages. Now, the company is expanding to more complex large language model (LLM) tasks with OpenAI's AI models, using the latest open-weight models, such as gpt-oss-120b/20b, to fine-tune large language models tailored for over 2,000 African languages with its own collected language samples.
Orange's aim is to address the digital divide by providing these fine-tuned models for free to local governments and public authorities, fostering an ecosystem where African languages become "first-class citizens" in AI. The models are being deployed locally across Orange's telecom services footprint in Africa and hosted in France and 26 African countries to comply with regional data sovereignty regulations.
Beyond translation, these models are enabling complex use cases like localized voice recognition and customer care solutions in regional languages, network optimization, and financial inclusion partnerships. For instance, Orange Money, which boasts over 42 million active users, is benefiting from these partnerships, improving services and lowering microloan risk costs.
Steve Jarrett, Chief AI Officer at Orange, stated that they plan to provide the fine-tuned models for free to local governments and public authorities. Historically, over 2,000 African languages have been left behind in the development of AI systems due to data scarcity and limited computational resources.
Orange's initiative is in active deployment and fine-tuning stages, scaling AI model adaptation for African languages with a broader goal of democratizing AI, supporting data sovereignty, and improving digital inclusion across the continent. The company aims to significantly advance AI accessibility, data sovereignty, and environmental sustainability in Africa through this partnership.
According to Jarrett, this collaboration is foundational to building trusted, responsible, and inclusive AI solutions that balance value generation with cost and environmental impact, aligning with Orange’s Responsible AI strategy.
The telecom giant Orange is utilizing AI models from OpenAI to address data scarcity and enhance digital inclusion for African languages, serving diverse business needs such as localized voice recognition, customer care solutions, network optimization, and financial inclusion. With the aim of democratizing AI, Orange plans to offer these fine-tuned models for free to local governments, fostering a technology-driven industry that recognizes African languages as key players in AI, finance, and business.
