Sama, data annotation and model evaluation firm working on artificial intelligence (AI) models for global players has entered into a strategic partnership with The University of Nairobi (UoN) designed to provide employment opportunities to students and faculty and as well increase the Generative AI (GenAI) skills in Kenya.
Sama says the partnership will allow UoN students and faculty to work on various Sama AI projects and gain exposure to the rapidly evolving GenAI environment. Sama will train the staff and students and provide equipment, materials and work areas needed for the part-time employment opportunities.
According to Prof Stephen Kiama, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nairobi, “Our partnership with Sama presents a significant step forward for students and faculty, providing a unique platform for students to apply their academic knowledge in a real-world setting, enhancing their learning and experience and better preparing them for the demands of the AI industry.”
This partnership has come at an opportune time as the UoN gears up to establish an Artificial Intelligence School as part of its plans to create skilled manpower for the future.
For a little history, In 2019, Facebook announced it was opening its first sub-Saharan Africa content review centre in Nairobi to provide jobs to a diverse group who speak several languages, including Somali, Oromo, Swahili and Hausa. Sama, then known as Samasource was the local partner hosting the review center.
Carolyn Komen, then Samasource Program Director, said giving work is the most powerful solution to ending global poverty. “We use technology and private sector methods to measurably improve access to work and job training,” she said. “Our team will receive extensive training and support, benefit from industry-leading facilities, and have the opportunity to advance their careers in tech through this partnership.”
The firm in the same month went ahead and raised $14.8M million Series A funding round to scale its engineering, sales and marketing efforts. With the cash, the firm had opened an AI Development Center in Montreal, Canada and a delivery center in Kampala, Uganda adding to it’s operations in San Francisco, New York City, the Hague, Gulu, and Nairobi.
Samasource, at the time, which employed more than 2,900 people, said it would use the funding to further establish itself as a pioneer in the field of AI and training data and continue to deliver secure, high-quality training data to its Fortune 50 companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, Walmart, Continental.
Daniel Motaung, the South African who was working for Meta/ Facebook as content moderator in Kenya claimed that he was paid about $2.20 per hour to review posts including beheadings and child abuse sued his then Kenyan-based employer Sama. Sama had been contracted by Meta for content moderation. His case follows 2020’s suit in the US that saw Meta pay $52m to content moderators who claimed mental health issues caused by their job at Meta.
Motaung said he was exposed to among other things “a live video of someone being beheaded” and suffered flashbacks of the gory images and videos. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and believed that many of his co-workers also struggled with the same. Foxglove, a UK registered non-profit community interest company, helped the South African whistleblower in the case against Sama, his ex-Kenyan employer and US-based Meta/Facebook.
But in July 2023, Sama confirmed plans to enhance its Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) investments locally after engagements with the national government players including the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) and the BPO Association of Kenya (BPOAK) and Sama Vice President of Global Delivery, Annepeace Alwala added that the firm expanded its service offering to include data annotation solutions.
“In Kenya, thanks to quality talent, Sama, is today a key player in the data annotation market providing best in class computer vision data labelling services. These services are delivered under the Sama data curation, annotation and validation business lines which we deliver for more than 25% of Fortune 50 companies who trust Sama to help them deliver industry-leading Machine Learning models,” Alwala said.
She added: “The local BPO Industry is growing at a steady rate with the BPO Association of Kenya estimating that we will jointly create more than one million jobs against more than $400 million USD in revenue. This makes the industry an important economic player with contemporary global solutions provision capacity.”
Sama, which started its operations in Kenya in 2011, expanded its labour force to over 3,000 employees, primarily drawn from Kenya but with over 20 nationalities from several African countries. Sama focuses on annotating data for artificial intelligence algorithms by providing computer vision solutions that power AI and machine learning models.
In Kenya, Sama offers a range of BPO services, including data validation, data curation, image and video annotation, content moderation, customer service support, data entry, software development, and 3D Point Cloud annotation forvariety of industries, including autonomous transportation, MedTech, agriculture, and retail solutions.
“Kenya has the potential to become a major player in the global BPO market, and we are excited to be a part of this growth. For over a decade, we have provided individuals who are most likely to be excluded from formal sector jobs. Through our purposeful impact hiring process, we connect individuals from low-income backgrounds, those who didn’t have the opportunity to pursue education beyond secondary school, and those who, prior to joining Sama, lived in extreme poverty with fair paying entry-level jobs,” Ms. Wendy Gonzalez, Sama Chief Executive Officer said.
Over 25% of Fortune 50 companies including Google, NVIDIA, General Motors, Walmart, Ford, Microsoft, eBay, Ford, and Glassdoor, trust Sama to help them deliver industry-leading machine learning models.
“Kenya’s skilled workforce, multilingual capabilities, and cultural compatibility are some of the key factors contributing to its competitive advantage in the global outsourcing landscape. As the sector continues to grow, we will work with the government and other stakeholders to help make Kenya an international BPO destination,” Ms. Gonzalez added.
Over the last decade, Kenya’s BPO industry has continued to attract a surge of global businesses seeking to outsource their operations, creating numerous employment opportunities and driving economic growth. In 2020, Sama became the first AI data labelling company to receive B Corp Certification, formally committing to create positive impact for employees, communities, customers, and the planet. Its training and employment program were recently validated by an MIT-led Randomized Controlled Trial.
Annepeace Alwala, Sama Vice President Global Service Delivery, stated, “We are thrilled to collaborate with the University of Nairobi to foster the next generation of AI talent in Kenya. This partnership underscores our commitment to driving innovation and creating opportunities for the youth to excel in the rapidly growing field of artificial intelligence. By providing students with practical experience, we are investing in the future of AI and contributing to the growth of the technology sector in Kenya.”
This partnership underscores Sama’s commitment to the national economic development agenda espoused by the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BeTA). This initiative is a significant step towards bridging the digital divide, promising to uplift communities, nurture talent and position Kenya within the global AI value chain.
