LINGUA Africa Open Call for Inclusive AI Language Projects (Discontinued)

LINGUA Africa Open Call for Inclusive AI Language Projects is sponsored by Microsoft Research (in collaboration with Gates Foundation, Google.org, and Masakhane). This call supports African-led AI solutions that address a range of development challenges, including health, agriculture, and education, by increasing the availability and quality of African-language resources. Projects emphasize creating open speech, text, multimodal, and sign-language datasets; developing automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies; and building practical AI tools for underserved communities.

LINGUA Open Call is a grant from Microsoft AI for Good Lab that funds projects building inclusive AI language resources for underrepresented African languages. Launched in partnership with the Gates Foundation, Google.org, and the Masakhane African Languages Hub, LINGUA Africa supports data creation (up to $50K cash plus $50K compute credits), model and tool development (up to $100K cash plus $100K compute credits), and real-world sectoral applications (up to $250K cash plus $400K compute credits). Eligible applicants include nonprofits, universities, research institutes, startups, and cultural organizations globally, provided projects meaningfully partner with Africa-based institutions. The application deadline is June 15, 2026.

AI for Good Open Call Program is sponsored by Microsoft Research (Microsoft AI for Good Lab). The AI for Good Open Call Program supports individuals and organizations creating positive change by driving innovative AI projects in sustainability, public health, and human rights. The program provides opportunities for scientific collaboration and Azure service credits.

The Microsoft AI for Good Lab Open Call is a grant program awarding $5 million in funding and Azure service credits to organizations leveraging artificial intelligence to address social and scientific challenges. The two-year program provides opportunities for scientific collaboration with Microsoft AI for Good Lab researchers along with Azure cloud computing resources. Focus areas include sustainability public health education and human rights. Successful applicants demonstrate potential for their concept and data to result in a unique and scalable solution to a major scientific or societal challenge using clean accurate and unbiased high-quality data. The inaugural 2025 cycle funded 20 projects in Washington state including work at Washington State University on AI for agriculture health and education. The program is expected to continue with future open calls. This program is distinct from the Microsoft AI for Accessibility grants which focus specifically on disability and accessibility solutions and from the Microsoft Accelerating Foundation Models Research Program which provides compute credits for foundation model research.