Afrilab AI Hub

About

Afrilab AI Hub is a Northern Nigeria–based research and innovation hub focused on advancing inclusive artificial intelligence for low-resource African languages. Our mission is to ensure that emerging AI technologies are accessible, culturally relevant, and beneficial to underserved communities.

Afrilab AI Hub is currently leading an extensive effort in low-resource language data collection and structuring, covering large-scale Hausa text corpora, speech datasets, image annotation, and video annotation workflows. Our work spans domains such as education, agriculture, health communication, civic engagement, scientific terminology, and indigenous knowledge systems. We design structured datasets with clear documentation, ethical guidelines, and annotation standards to support responsible AI development.

What We Provide

1. African Language Datasets Curated datasets supporting natural language processing, speech technology, and multimodal AI research.

2. Text and Knowledge Resources Structured corpora and terminology datasets for AI model training and linguistic research.

3. Speech Datasets Audio datasets for developing speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS) systems.

4. Image and Video Annotation Annotated visual datasets for computer vision and multimodal AI applications.

5. AI-Ready Dataset Documentation Datasets delivered with metadata, annotation guidelines, and structured documentation.

A core focus of our work is speech technology innovation. We are developing Hausa-focused Speech-to-Text (STT) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems to enable voice-based access to digital tools for communities with varying literacy levels. In addition, we are exploring AI-assisted dubbing, voice adaptation, and controlled voice cloning technologies for educational and media applications, with strong safeguards around consent, ethical usage, and data protection.

Beyond technical development, Afrilab AI Hub invests heavily in youth capacity building, training young data curators, annotators, and AI practitioners in ethical data practices and applied machine learning.

By combining data infrastructure development, speech technology research, and community-centered AI training, Afrilab AI Hub is contributing to a more inclusive AI ecosystem—one where African languages are not an afterthought but a foundation for innovation.