PAWA AI

PAWA AI is strengthening Africa’s AI ecosystem through its no-code platform for building, fine-tuning, and deploying small language models (SLMs) that run reliably across edge, private cloud, and sovereign cloud environments. Founded in 2024 by Winnie Mang’eni, Innocent Charles, and Dr. Michael Mollel, the company addresses a major gap in African AI development: the need for localized, cost-efficient, and secure model production pipelines designed for low-resource contexts. Leveraging state-of-the-art optimization and quantization techniques, PAWA AI’s integrated stack allows users to train and export multilingual models in minutes, enabling governments, schools, and enterprises to deploy domain-specific AI agents that respect data sovereignty and reduce cloud dependency. Its platform powers diverse use cases — from agribots assisting farmers with crop and market insights to education agents supporting teachers and students in Swahili and other local languages. Through the Compute Accelerator’s Ready Track, PAWA AI will train its models using dedicated GPU resources and guidance on scaling ethical, energy-efficient AI systems. By uniting governance, localization, and accessibility in one workflow, PAWA AI exemplifies Africa’s next generation of compute innovators — transforming small models into big impact for inclusive, culturally grounded AI adoption.