Econet Ai – a wholly owned subsidiary of Econet Wireless Zimbabwe – has launched Shona 2.0, the latest version of its Shona Artificial Intelligence (AI) model.
AI models power Yamurai, Econet’s multilingual customer support chatbot, with the intelligence that enables it to increasingly handle most of the company’s customer inquiries.
Econet said the model now has the capability to comprehend and answer 80% of customer queries, putting it on par with international languages, and marking the first time an African AI language model has reached this level of comprehension.
It said Shona 2.0 can now understand customers who mix Shona and English when speaking, a common practice that often confuses AI Models.
Econet Ai has also begun to train the model in six different Shona dialects. It will soon be able to identify the dialect a customer is using and automatically respond in that dialect.
“AI models are trained just like children; they learn and continually improve from listening to our customers. So, you find that in the beginning Yamurai in Shona was like speaking to a robot, but today it is getting much more like a person. It is getting better all the time,” said Econet Ai CEO Mr Navdeep Kapur.
There is a full-time engineering team working on continually training and improving the Yamurai language models. Ndebele 1.0 was launched last month, and work is at an advanced stage to get Ndebele 2.0 out before the end of the month.
The company said Yamurai had drastically improved Econet’s ability to respond to customer queries and significantly reduced customer waiting times on the helpline, ensuring that all queries are addressed.
Econet is continuously expanding Yamurai’s capabilities as it seeks to improve the quality of its service delivery. Through Econet Ai, the company is tackling problems many operators in Africa have struggled with for years without any real solution.
“Now there is real light at the end of the tunnel, as AI opens solutions at all levels of telco operations. It takes time to get them all deployed but we are confident that we are only months away from having the best service in Africa,” said Mr Kapur.
Econet said the development of multilingual and agentic chatbots forms part of its broader strategy to use AI to improve customer service, increase accessibility and provide faster support across its platforms.
Econet Ai was launched earlier this year to deliver advanced AI solutions to the Zimbabwean market.
Econet Ai works closely with Cassava AI, the artificial intelligence business of Cassava Technologies, to bring advanced AI solutions to Zimbabwe.
The collaboration connects Econet Ai’s local expertise with Cassava AI’s global technology partnerships and enterprise AI capabilities, supporting the development and delivery of solutions tailored to the Zimbabwean market.
