Microsoft Research Lab – Africa, Nairobi
News & features
Ideas: Steering AI toward the work future we want
| Jaime Teevan, Jenna Butler, Jake Hofman, and Rebecca Janssen
Microsoft Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and researchers Jenna Butler, Jake Hofman, and Rebecca Janssen unpack the New Future of Work Report 2025 and explore the ideal AI-driven working world. Plus, is AI a tool or a collaborator? And why the answer matters.
In the news | Microsoft on the Issues
We need to act with urgency to address the growing AI divide
Artificial intelligence is diffusing at an impressive speed, but its adoption around the world remains profoundly uneven. As Microsoft’s latest AI Diffusion Report shows, AI usage in the Global North is roughly twice that of the Global South. And this divide continues…
Awards | ACM SIGCHI
ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact Award
Jacki O’Neill, founding Lab Director of Microsoft Research Africa, Nairobi, was given the 2026 Societal Impact Award by ACM SIGCHI for her research in computer science which has had extensive societal impact specifically in the areas of financial inclusion, future…
Paza: Introducing automatic speech recognition benchmarks and models for low resource languages
| Mercy Muchai, Kevin Chege, Nick Mumero, and Stephanie Nyairo
Microsoft Research unveils Paza, a human-centered speech pipeline, and PazaBench, the first leaderboard for low-resource languages. It covers 39 African languages and 52 models and is tested with communities in real settings.
AI tools can perform poorly in non-Western languages and lack critical cultural context for many populations. Project Gecko uses small language models to bring vital expertise to farmers in underserved areas using local languages and multi-modal content.
Research Focus: Week of May 7, 2025
In this issue: New research on compound AI systems and causal verification of the Confidential Consortium Framework; release of Phi-4-reasoning; enriching tabular data with semantic structure, and more.
Microsoft Research Forum Episode 3: Globally inclusive and equitable AI, new use cases for AI, and more
“We’re at the very early stage of generative AI and the impacts it will have on work. This is a fast-moving field, and there’s an immense opportunity to take control of the agenda and build truly globally equitable AI systems”,…
Microsoft researchers discuss the challenges and opportunities of making AI more inclusive and impactful for everyone—from data that represents a broader range of communities and cultures to novel use cases for AI that are globally relevant.
Jacki O’Neill discusses the importance of creating globally equitable generative AI. She addresses the technical and sociotechnical challenges that must be tackled to positively transform work futures worldwide.