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Sunflower: A New Approach To Expanding Coverage of African Languages in Large Language Models

arXiv 2510.07203 ↗First posted 8 Oct 2025cs.CLcited by 0

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Abstract (arXiv)

There are more than 2000 living languages in Africa, most of which have been bypassed by advances in language technology. Current leading LLMs exhibit strong performance on a number of the most common languages (e.g. Swahili or Yoruba), but prioritise support for the languages with the most speakers first, resulting in piecemeal ability across disparate languages. We contend that a regionally focussed approach is more efficient, and present a case study for Uganda, a country with high linguistic diversity. We describe the development of Sunflower 14B and 32B, a pair of models based on Qwen 3 with state of the art comprehension in the majority of all Ugandan languages. These models are open source and can be used to reduce language barriers in a number of important practical applications.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 37 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Oct 2025.

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References · 37

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25 more
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