Guest Lecture: Jan Nehring

March 23, 2026

1:00 p.m. CAT

A203

Open-Source LLMs, Agentic AI, and NLP Tooling for the Afri-can Context 

This presentation outlines the future AI research agenda of Jan Nehring, taking previous and on-going research activities into account. His applied research bridges the gap in AI models and datasets for low-resource African languages, with a primary emphasis on Kinyarwanda. His agenda is structured across four work streams:

  • Open-Source LLMs: Training and publishing truly open Large Language Models for African languages, including the release of all underlying data and training scripts to foster transparency and reproducibility.
  • Agentic AI & Dialog Systems: Leveraging a deep background in conversational AI to evolve task-oriented dialog systems.
  • Foundational NLP Infrastructure for Kinyarwanda: Creating essential tooling and datasets by integrating master’s theses and student-led projects into the research lifecycle.
  • Ethical AI for Africa: Conducting critical examinations of AI technologies to ensure they are culturally aligned and technically ready for the African context. 

Host: Tim Brown

Bio

Based in Kigali, Dr. Jan Nehring is an AI Development Advisor for GIZ (since 1.5 years), where he specializes in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and dialog systems. Nehring's career began as a freelance software developer (seven years) before transitioning into AI research (11 years), primarily at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Berlin. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science titled "Modular Dialog Systems" from the Technical University of Berlin. Today, he leverages his technical expertise to bridge the gap in AI models and datasets for low-resource African languages, driving digital sovereignty and innovation in the Rwandan AI ecosystem.

Upcoming Events