Our Language is Our Strength

NaijaVoices | Our Language is Our Strength

Across the globe, major speech recognition platforms like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google’s Home dominate the market, yet they neglect the rich tapestry of African languages. Not a single native African language is supported by the current voice technologies widely used.

Our groundbreaking project and community, NaijaVoices, aims to change this narrative by compiling extensive audio datasets in Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba. So far, our community has created 1,500 hours of authentic speech (from over 5,000 diverse speakers!) and expert curated text in Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba. This dataset, which is shared openly, will not only fuel advancements in machine learning but also catalyze the development of cutting-edge speech-related technologies in artificial intelligence. From education and healthcare to agriculture and finance, the impact of this initiative will be felt across diverse sectors, driving rapid advancements in AI-related innovations.

Our Dataset

The NaijaVoices dataset captures the essence of the Nigerian culture in the following ways:

✅ Authentic, expert-generated, contextualized sentences. The kind of originality you won't see on the internet!
✅ 1,500 hours of quality recordings from more than 5000 diverse speakers.
✅ Encompassing the three major Nigerian languages, along with our various speaking styles: from youthful to elder, diverse intonations, dialects, accents, and more.

Our dataset is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Basically, It's free for personal and research use, with proper credit to the community. For commercial interests, please reach out to us.

⬇️ Listen to some samples below.