Google, in partnership with leading African universities and community organizations, today unveiled WAXAL, a large-scale speech dataset aimed at bringing over 100 million Africans into the AI-powered digital future.
Voice technologies have largely bypassed Africa due to the scarcity of high-quality speech data. WAXAL addresses this gap with 1,250 hours of transcribed, natural speech and over 20 hours of high-fidelity studio recordings across 21 Sub-Saharan languages, including Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Luganda, and Acholi.
“The ultimate impact of WAXAL is the empowerment of people in Africa,” said Aisha Walcott-Bryantt, Head of Google Research Africa. “This dataset provides the critical foundation for students, researchers, and entrepreneurs to build technology on their own terms, in their own languages, finally reaching over 100 million people.”
The project has been developed over three years with guidance from Google. It was led by African institutions like Makerere University (Uganda), University of Ghana and Digital Umuganda (Rwanda), which retain full ownership of the dataset.
“For AI to have a real impact in Africa, it must speak our languages and understand our contexts. The WAXAL dataset gives our researchers the high-quality data they need to build speech technologies that reflect our unique communities,” said Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende, Makerere University.
“Over 7,000 volunteers joined us because they wanted their voices and languages to belong in the digital future. Today, that collective effort has sparked an ecosystem of innovation in fields like health, education, and agriculture,” added Prof Isaac Wiafe, University of Ghana.
The WAXAL dataset is openly accessible and aims to empower a generation of African innovators to create voice-enabled services, educational platforms and other AI solutions that are inclusive of Africa’s diverse linguistic landscape.
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