He Wanted an AI That Understood Nigerians, So He Built Green AI.
What if the AI you use every day understood Nigerian languages, respected your privacy and recognised local knowledge? One founder believes that future should start here.
For many Nigerians, using artificial intelligence still feels like borrowing someone else's tool. It works, but sometimes it misses the local context. It struggles with Nigerian languages, overlooks African creators and often feels built for people somewhere else.
That is the gap Sofiri Clarkson Isaiah Green says he wanted to close.
According to the founder, Green AI was created to give Nigerians and Africans an AI experience that feels more relevant to their everyday needs. Rather than focusing only on answering questions, the platform is designed with different modes that help users complete specific tasks.
Built Around Everyday Work
Green AI can analyse images and documents, summarise long PDFs, answer questions from uploaded files, draft emails, translate languages, transcribe audio recordings and even explain song lyrics from audio files. It also offers tools for deep research, website verification, AI text detection and rewriting AI generated content into more natural language.
The platform also supports conversations in local languages such as Igbo and Yoruba when prompted.
According to Sofiri, the decision to build Green AI came after using several existing AI models and realising many African users wanted something different. He says surveys carried out during development showed that people wanted an AI assistant that was useful, secure and easier to personalise.
Putting Privacy First
One of the biggest ideas behind Green AI is privacy.
Sofiri says conversations between users and the AI are designed to remain private and are not intended to be used against users.
He also wanted researchers, writers and creatives to find more African knowledge within AI systems, an area he believes is still underrepresented on many global platforms.
Another goal, according to the founder, is to reduce AI hallucinations, situations where AI generates information that sounds convincing but is inaccurate.
For Green AI, the journey is about more than building another chatbot. It is about showing that African founders can create technology shaped by local realities, local languages and the needs of the people who use it every day.
As artificial intelligence continues to grow across Africa, projects like Green AI raise an important question.
Should the future of AI on the continent be built by others, or should Africans build tools that understand Africa from the start?
What features would make you trust an AI platform built in Africa?
