The Made in Africa AI in MERL Framework – Virtual World Cafe Working Session
July 14 @ 8:00 am
On July 14, 2026, at 11am ET / 4pm BST / 5pm CAT / 6pm EAT, the MERL Tech Initiative‘s Africa AI Learning Group at the Natural Language Processing Community of Practice (NLP-CoP) will convene a special World Café working session.
Participants will work in small groups with peers from across the continent, debating, co-creating, and stress-testing ideas together. The session centers on values and principles: what should a Made in Africa AI in MERL framework actually stand for, and what competencies, i.e technical, ethical, governance-related, and contextual, do evaluators need to put those commitments into practice?
By the end of the session, participants will have
- Contributed and shaped a first draft of a Made in Africa AI in MERL Framework
- Clarity on the competencies that will keep them competitive and grounded as an evaluator
- New connections with peers who are grappling with the same questions