Ms. Hajra Faki Ali is an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Information and Communication Technologies (CoICT), University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), Tanzania. She is an emerging scholar in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), with a specialisation in Natural Language Processing (NLP) for low-resource languages. Her research focuses on Natural Language Inference (NLI) in Swahili, addressing challenges of data scarcity, model adaptation, and performance optimisation in low-resource linguistic contexts.

Ms. Ali’s academic and professional journey reflects a strong theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and a passion for advancing computational linguistics in Africa. Her master’s research, “A Comparative Study of Natural Language Inference in Swahili Using Monolingual and Multilingual Models”, provides valuable insights into the relationship between dataset quality and model architecture in AI systems for low-resource languages. This work has been published in a peer-reviewed journal, contributing to scholarly discussions on Swahili language technology.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Dar es Salaam (2017), a Master of Engineering in Computer Science and Technology from Dalian Maritime University, China (2023), and a Master of Computer Science from Universitas Indonesia (2024). Her academic training across Tanzania, China, and Indonesia has provided cross-cultural research experience and exposure to diverse AI applications, enhancing her contributions to both local and global AI discourse.

At CoICT, Ms. Ali is actively involved in teaching, research, and community service. She teaches computer science and engineering undergraduate courses, delivers tutorials, supervises laboratory sessions, and assesses student performance. She also supervises undergraduate research projects, guiding the next generation of Tanzanian computer scientists.

Her dedication extends to mentorship and outreach. She has served as a mentor in the Help to Help initiative, training university students in essential IT skills, and has collaborated with the Cambridge Development Initiative to provide self-development training to secondary school students.