How homegrown technology is transforming communication for millions across the continent
In innovation hubs from Accra to Nairobi, a new generation of African tech entrepreneurs is rewriting the rules of accessibility and digital inclusion. Armed with artificial intelligence and a deep understanding of local needs, they’re creating solutions that global tech giants have long overlooked—tools that preserve linguistic heritage while breaking down communication barriers for millions.
Bringing Africa’s Languages into the Digital Age
For decades, speakers of African languages have faced a stark digital divide. While major tech companies invested billions in AI for widely spoken languages like English, Spanish, and Mandarin, the continent’s rich linguistic tapestry remained largely invisible in the digital sphere. Google Translate might handle French or Arabic, but what about Twi, Dagbani, or Kikuyu?
Enter KhayaAI, a groundbreaking initiative by Ghana NLP and Algorine that’s changing this narrative. Named after the African Mahogany tree—and meaning “home” in several Southern African languages—the platform has developed speech recognition and text translation tools for over 32 African languages, potentially serving more than 540 million people across the continent.
The achievement is particularly significant in Ghana, where KhayaAI now covers all nine government-sponsored languages: Akan (including Twi dialects), Dagaare, Dagbani, Dangme, Ewe, Ga, Gonja, Kasem, and Nzema. These languages, spoken by millions, can now be transcribed from speech to text and translated seamlessly through the platform’s mobile and web applications.
“We like to think of ourselves as democratizing access to modern machine learning tools for African languages,” explains the team behind KhayaAI. The platform doesn’t just translate—it learns and improves through user feedback, a crucial feature given the complexity and regional variations in many African languages.
Unlike one-size-fits-all approaches, KhayaAI was built from the ground up with African linguistic realities in mind. The system has evolved from “one-to-one” models—requiring separate training for each language pair—to more efficient “many-to-one” and “one-to-many” architectures. This innovation allows the platform to scale across languages while maintaining quality and keeping costs manageable for the bootstrapped team.
The impact extends beyond Ghana’s borders. KhayaAI has expanded to include Nigerian Yoruba, Kenyan languages like Kikuyu, Kimeru, and Luo, and continues to add new languages. In competitive testing, the platform’s Yoruba translator outperformed Google Translate, demonstrating that locally developed solutions can match or exceed the offerings of tech giants when built with cultural and linguistic nuance in mind.
Users can now speak directly to their phones in languages like Twi, Ewe, or Yoruba, watching as the AI transcribes their speech into text with increasing accuracy. The platform also offers text-to-speech capabilities for select languages, allowing devices to pronounce words correctly—a feature especially valuable for language learners and education.
Giving Voice to the Unheard
Seven hundred kilometers to the east, in Nairobi’s bustling innovation ecosystem, 24-year-old Elly Savatia is tackling a different but equally critical communication barrier. His startup, Signvrse, has created Terp 360—Africa’s first AI-powered sign language translation platform.
The numbers tell a sobering story. Kenya is home to approximately 600,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing people, with around 340,000 using Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) as their primary means of communication. Yet finding a human interpreter is expensive and often impossible, leaving deaf individuals isolated in hospitals, schools, workplaces, and public services.
“Most people do not know sign language,” Savatia explains. “It was not just about technology anymore. It was about fairness, dignity, and the basic human right to communication.”
Terp 360 works like a digital interpreter in your pocket. Users type or speak in English, and a realistic 3D avatar translates their words into Kenyan Sign Language using fluid, natural movements. The sophistication lies in the details: the avatars don’t just move their hands—they capture the facial expressions, body gestures, and rotations that give sign language its depth and meaning.
The technology behind this relies on motion capture systems that record real sign language interpreters. These movements are then meticulously tracked and stored in what’s becoming Kenya’s largest sign language dataset—over 20,000 professionally captured sign sequences, validated by deaf community partners before going live.
Savatia emphasizes that co-creation was fundamental to the project’s development. More than 30 deaf individuals have directly shaped Terp 360, ensuring the platform doesn’t just work technically but resonates culturally with the community it serves. The dataset includes signers from both urban (60%) and rural (40%) areas, capturing regional variations in how sign language is used across Kenya.
Founded in 2023, Signvrse has already garnered impressive recognition. The startup received the Kenya Presidential Innovation Award and was selected for the prestigious Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI program, one of only 21 organizations worldwide to receive this support. Additional accolades include the Commonwealth Secretary-General’s Innovation Award and backing from Carnegie Mellon University.
The web-based platform has attracted 2,000 users since launch, and a mobile app is slated for release in December 2025, with subscription options for both personal and business use. Teachers are testing it to improve lesson delivery, healthcare workers are using it to serve deaf patients better, and businesses are exploring how it can create more inclusive workplaces.
Challenges and the Path Forward
Both innovations face similar hurdles. For KhayaAI, the challenge lies in continuing to expand language coverage while maintaining quality and affordability without major funding. The team has built many language models already, but scaling them in production requires resources that a bootstrapped operation struggles to secure.
Signvrse confronts skepticism about AI translations. Leakey Nyabaro, founder of Galaxy Sign Language Training Centre and a member of the deaf community, notes that the app still makes errors and currently benefits hearing users more than deaf users, particularly in sign-to-voice translation. “It’s not perfect, but it’s more effective when it is sign-to-voice. We find that it is voiced correctly, benefiting more of the hearing community but not the deaf,” he observes.
Savatia acknowledges these concerns candidly. “We can generate sign language, but some deaf individuals have not embraced digital avatars yet. That means one of two things: either they are not ready for digital communication, or our technology is not good enough. We’re working on the latter.”
Both platforms also face the challenge of language expansion. KhayaAI users request additional languages regularly, particularly Swahili, which would dramatically increase the platform’s utility across East Africa. Signvrse is similarly focused on adding Swahili alongside English to better serve Kenya’s multilingual context.
A Model for Global Inclusion
What makes these initiatives particularly significant is that they demonstrate how locally developed technology can address needs that global corporations have ignored. Western accessibility tools typically prioritize American or British sign languages, leaving African users behind. Major translation platforms focus on economically powerful languages, rendering African linguistic diversity invisible.
By centering African languages and communities in their design process, KhayaAI and Signvrse prove that inclusion requires intentional effort. Technology that doesn’t incorporate overlooked communities perpetuates inequities; technology built with those communities in mind can create opportunities at scale.
The datasets these companies are building—KhayaAI’s multilingual speech and text corpora, Signvrse’s motion-captured sign language sequences—will become foundational resources for future AI development across Africa. They’re not just creating products; they’re building infrastructure for a more inclusive digital future.
As African populations grow and urbanize, demand for these technologies will only increase. The continent is projected to have the world’s largest workforce by 2050, and ensuring linguistic access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities will be crucial for development.
Looking Ahead
Both companies have ambitious expansion plans. KhayaAI aims to scale across the African continent, with languages such as Amharic and Wolof already in development. Signvrse envisions expanding beyond Kenya to cover other African sign languages, creating a pan-African accessibility network.
More broadly, these startups are building bridges where there were walls. A Ghanaian farmer can now use voice commands in Twi to access agricultural information on their smartphone. A deaf Kenyan student can follow a lecture translated into KSL by a digital avatar. A business in Lagos can communicate with Yoruba-speaking customers through AI-powered tools built by Africans, for Africans.
The innovations emerging from Accra and Nairobi aren’t just about technology—they’re about dignity, opportunity, and the fundamental right to be heard. In a world where digital access increasingly determines economic and social participation, ensuring that everyone can communicate in their own language isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity.
As Savatia puts it: “The deaf community has been left behind, and we’re changing that.” The same could be said for speakers of African languages everywhere. Thanks to homegrown innovation, being left behind is no longer inevitable. The future, it turns out, speaks Twi, signs in KSL, and is being built right here in Africa.
Demos of KhayaAI are available on both iOS and Android app stores, as well as through web platforms. Signvrse’s Terp 360 can be accessed at the company’s website, with mobile applications coming soon.
