10171283Sabi Salone: Building Africa’s AI Policy Assistant – Starting with Sierra LeoneClosedFast Start ResponseInnovate UKSabi Salone is an AI-powered policy and legislation repository designed to improve access to official government documents in Sierra Leone. By combining trusted human networks with artificial intelligence and full citation transparency, Sabi enables users to quickly find reliable, up-to-date policies---even those that are not publicly available online. In Sierra Leone, many government policies are approved and shared internally as PDFs but never uploaded to official websites. Others may be hosted on partner or donor platforms with inconsistent formats, missing metadata, or broken links. As a result, even senior civil servants often rely on informal channels to find documents outside their own ministry. For consultants, NGOs, researchers, and journalists, accessing and comparing policy across sectors is even more difficult. Sabi Salone directly addresses this challenge through a user-friendly platform designed for real-world conditions: * A nationwide network of "policy scouts" drawn from government, Parliament, and affiliated institutions flags newly approved policies. Ministries sign formal Document Inclusion Agreements, authorizing Sabi Salone to host and share their documents. * The platform currently holds over 400 official documents. Each file is cleaned, OCR-processed, and enhanced with AI-generated summaries, topic tags, and legal references---then reviewed by a human editor for quality and accuracy. * Users can ask plain-language questions (e.g. "What is the national policy on school subsidies?") and receive clear, paragraph-level answers with clickable citations that link directly to the original source. Sabi is not just a repository---it's a practical tool for evidence-based decision-making. Government officials use it to draft new policies. Consultants and NGOs use it to align projects with national strategy. Journalists and researchers use it to find credible, timely sources. While similar tools exist globally, such as Policy Insider AI, they depend on structured digital publication---a model that does not fit the realities of Sierra Leone's policy environment. Sabi Salone's innovation lies in bridging this gap: it integrates institutional relationships, AI technology, and human verification to make public policy truly accessible. Already operational in Sierra Leone, Sabi Salone is designed to scale. Expanding to nearby countries like Liberia or The Gambia would involve onboarding local scouts and adapting content categories---not rebuilding the system from scratch.