National AI Innovation Challenge 2026
NCAIR invites Nigerian teams to ship a working tool on N-ATLAS by 12 October 2026. Winners are listed for a cash prize. The page does not state the amount.
The National AI Innovation Challenge is a build only call from NCAIR, with ONDI and the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, to put Nigeria's open source model N-ATLAS to work. N-ATLAS is described as a multilingual model, fine tuned from Llama 3 8B, with support for Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Nigerian accented English, plus speech recognition.
Applications opened on 22 September 2026 and close on 12 October 2026 at 11:59 PM WAT. The academic application page shows the same deadline as 12 October 2026, 22:59, and the status "Applications open". You pick one problem: developer tools for N-ATLAS, a voice service for people who do not type, or a fine tune for one sector such as health, agriculture, education, legal information, or basic finance. A slide deck or a paper with no working build is not enough.
There are two tracks. Academia and research is for university teams of 2 to 5, with at least one enrolled student or postgraduate researcher, a faculty supervisor, and a letter from a head of department. Innovation and enterprise is for startups, technology companies, social enterprises, independent developers, and hubs. Individual applicants must be Nigerian citizens aged 18 or over. A company needs a Corporate Affairs Commission certificate. A team with members abroad must keep at least half of the team in Nigeria. Every team member must be a Nigerian citizen or part of a registered Nigerian entity. Apply once, to one problem. The academic form is on the ONDI platform. The enterprise form is at https://ondi.innox.africa/apply/naic/naic-innovation-enterprise.
The academic prize list names a cash prize for first, second, and third, plus research partnership, compute access, and publication support. The pages do not state how much the cash prize is. Shortlisted teams are offered N-ATLAS API credentials, compute credits, and mentorship from 25 October to 4 November 2026. Finals are 8 to 10 November 2026. Questions go to naic@nitda.gov.ng.