Location: Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Sciences, University of Yaounde I, Cameroon
Tentative Start Date: September 25, 2026
Application Deadline: August 31, 2026 at 23:59 UTC
Duration: 2 years
Gross Salary: Approximately 5,058,000 fcfa /year (commensurate with experience)
About the Position
This postdoctoral position is funded by the LINGUA Africa initiative, a major grant program and collaborative effort to address the critical underrepresentation of African languages in modern AI systems. By investing in data, models, and real-world applications, the project aims to ensure that speakers of African languages are not left behind as AI becomes more integrated into essential services such as healthcare, education, agriculture, and public administration.
LINGUA Africa awardees fall into three categories:
(1) Data Creation: projects focused on building, curating, translating, or licensing datasets;
(2) Model or Tool Development: projects creating or adapting models, benchmarks, and technical infrastructure;
(3) Sectoral Applications: projects piloting language technologies in real-world settings with a clear path to social or economic impact. Beyond financial support, the project awardees will receive technical assistance from postdoctoral researchers.
We are seeking a highly motivated and collaborative postdoc with demonstrated skills in Natural Language Processing (NLP) for African languages. Approximately 75% of the postdoc’s time will be dedicated to supporting LINGUA Africa awardees through technical assistance and mentorship.
The postdoctoral researcher will provide support to LINGUA Africa awardees (not limited to):
-Train and fine-tune AI models for healthcare, education, and agriculture applications. Guide the development of sector-specific evaluation datasets.
-Evaluate AI models (LLMs, SLMs, VLMs, Speech models) against established benchmarks.
-Mentor awardees in responsible AI practices.
-Collaborate across the cohort of researchers and share learnings.
-Publish papers and posters in collaboration with awardees and the host Principal Investigator (PI).
-Ensure ethical, inclusive, and equitable AI applications.
In addition, the postdoc will: collaborate with other IDASCO/UMMISCO Yaounde members on diverse research projects, participate in national and international conferences aligned with the postdoc’s research themes, undertake research visits to partner teams in Cameroon, and work alongside other postdocs of the LINGUA Africa initiative placed in partner labs.
In addition, the postdoc will: collaborate with other IDASCO/UMMISCO Yaounde members on diverse research projects, participate in national and international conferences aligned with the postdoc’s research themes, undertake research visits to partner teams in Cameroon, and work alongside other postdocs of the LINGUA Africa initiative placed in partner labs.
The call is open to early-career researchers from around the world who have held a PhD in Computer Science for less than four years and will have defended their thesis no later than 1 January 2026.
The postdoc researcher will be supervised by Pr. Paulin Melatagia.
Qualifications
-Technical & Research Skills
-Advanced AI Model Training in NLP for African Languages: Proven experience in training, fine-tuning, and evaluating AI models, including Large Language Models (LLMs), Small Language Models (SLMs), etc.
-Benchmark & Dataset Development: Demonstrated ability to design and guide the creation of sector-specific evaluation NLP datasets, and to rigorously evaluate AI model performance against established benchmarks.
-Research & Publication: A strong record of, or clear potential for, publishing research findings in peer-reviewed journals and conferences, with a focus on NLP.
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