🌍 AI in Africa - Makerere AI Lab

Language Data

The Makerere AI Lab is tackling the challenge of building localized data for African languages, essential for developing AI systems like automatic speech recognition. Mutembesa highlights the collaboration with Mozilla and Fairford to crowdsource voice recordings, emphasizing the need for quality localized training data. This initiative is part of the Open for Good alliance, which aims to enhance data availability and quality for machine learning in Africa and Asia 1.

We realized that you can't build a system without data. And so we had to go back and then think of how can we be able to collect the data that we can use for building our systems?

--- Mutembesa

The alliance provides a platform for organizations to coordinate and exchange best practices, addressing the lack of sufficient quality data that hinders local innovation 1.

   

Collaborations

International collaborations are pivotal in advancing AI-driven language technologies in Africa. Daniel Whitenack introduces the Open for Good alliance, a multistakeholder group formed in 2020, which includes Makerere University and other global partners 2. Joyce and Mutembesa from the Makerere AI Lab are actively involved in this alliance, contributing to community building and dataset development.

We're really excited to have you both join us today to talk about the great work happening with Open for Good and Makerere University.

--- Daniel Whitenack

This collaboration not only enhances AI capabilities but also fosters a vibrant AI community across Africa, showcasing the continent's potential in the global AI landscape 2.