Ingoverse Tech Hub — African Language AI, Data & Inclusion

Quick value pillars

Three ways we create practical impact right now.

Speech & Language Data

End‑to‑end pipelines for ASR/TTS, with field‑proven practices for diverse, high‑quality datasets.

Open Tooling

Playbooks and open‑source platforms that make grassroots data collection simple, ethical, and scalable.

Evidence & Mapping

Quantitative, searchable indexes of African NLP datasets and models to guide investment and research.

About Ingoverse

Ingoverse is a community‑rooted innovation hub that translates local knowledge into usable AI infrastructure. We operate at the intersection of technology, linguistics, and social impact—partnering with communities, universities, and civic organizations to produce open datasets, open‑source software, and actionable research for African languages.

We are headquartered in Kenya and work across East and Southern Africa with a strong Sukuma (Tanzania) focus alongside Swahili and other regional languages. Our model blends community engagement, rigorous data standards, and transparent governance so that language AI advances inclusively and sustainably.

Why language technology, now

Millions of Africans interact with digital services in languages that technology barely understands. We close that gap by delivering:

High‑quality speech and text datasets that power ASR, TTS, MT, and LLMs.
Open, reusable infrastructure so communities can collect, govern, and benefit from their own data.
Neutral, quantitative maps of the ecosystem to highlight gaps and reduce duplication.

Our domain expertise

Where we go deep—and ship.

1) Speech & ASR/TTS data (with deep Sukuma capability)

We design and run full‑stack speech data programs—from prompt design to public release—tailored to under‑resourced languages.

• Sukuma voice leadership: regional recruitment, accent coverage (Mwanza, Shinyanga, Simiyu, Tabora), phonetic balance, cultural relevance.
• Production standards: 16‑bit PCM WAV at ≥48 kHz, SNR ≥ 40 dB, tight alignment, multi‑stage QA.
• TTS‑readiness: ≥50 hours per language meeting multi‑speaker criteria.
• Scale: plans to reach ≥500 speakers and ≥500 hours of read speech as required.
• Open licensing & FAIR: CC‑BY 4.0 (or equivalent) with comprehensive metadata.

2) Open data playbooks & collection platforms

Modular playbooks and open‑source, multilingual platforms enabling grassroots data collection across modalities.

• Playbook: consent templates, licensing decision trees, governance modules, low‑literacy visual aids.
• Platform: web + mobile, offline‑first capture, contributor management, dashboards, exports (CSV/JSON/WAV), localization.
• DevOps: containerized deployments, GitHub repos, API docs, training videos; MIT/Apache‑2.0 licenses.

3) Quantitative mapping & searchable indexes

Cataloguing African language datasets and models (text, speech, multimodal) with a public, filterable index.

• Scope: dataset size, modality, domain, license, family, availability; model tasks and benchmarks.
• Gap & bias analysis: gender/region, licensing barriers, inclusion risks.
• Community validation: expert workshops and public review cycles.

Featured initiatives

Sukuma Voice Commons (flagship)

A community‑driven effort to build a high‑quality Sukuma speech corpus with broad demographic and regional coverage. Includes curated prompts, ethical consent workflows, and robust QA with public release as a digital public good.

Grassroots Language Data Playbook & Toolkit

A task‑based handbook and template set to help teams plan, collect, clean, license, and publish language datasets responsibly.

African Language Tech Atlas

A living, searchable index of datasets and models across African languages—built to reduce duplication, spotlight gaps, and inform funders, builders, and policy.

How we work (methodology)

1) Community‑first design

• Co‑design with local speakers and cultural advisors
• Inclusive recruitment, fair compensation, transparent consent

2) Data creation & QA

• Prompt design with phonetic/lexical coverage; 5–10% parallel prompts
• Clean recordings, device guidance, on‑device validation
• Multi‑stage QA: automated filters, human spot‑checks, re‑record loops

3) Documentation & release

• Rich metadata (demographics, regions, device types, durations)
• Data cards, QA reports, reproducible scripts
• Open licensing (CC‑BY 4.0) & FAIR principles

4) Maintenance & sustainability

• Update cycles with stewards (community moderators, university labs)
• Governance playbooks and issue‑tracking for continuous improvement

Standards we uphold

• Audio: 16‑bit PCM WAV, ≥48 kHz; clear enunciation; strict file naming/indexing
• Quality: ≥95% transcript accuracy; time‑aligned utterances
• TTS subset: ≥50 hours per language curated for multi‑speaker TTS

• Security & privacy: de‑identification, encrypted storage, role‑based access
• Ethics: informed consent, safeguarding, respectful treatment
• Licensing: preference for CC‑BY 4.0 (datasets) & permissive OSS licenses

Inclusion, gender, and safeguarding

• Gender‑balanced recruitment and accessibility provisions
• Clear redress channels and independent oversight
• Non‑exploitative compensation and transparent terms

Tooling & infrastructure

Collector app

Mobile & web, multilingual UI, offline recording, quality hints (VAD, RMS, SNR).

Annotator

Text correction, alignment tools, speaker/session dashboards.

Admin console

Contributor management, KPIs, audit trails, export center.

Dev practices

CI/CD, privacy‑aware telemetry, performance on low‑spec devices, energy‑aware compute choices.

Impact metrics (what we measure)

Participation & Coverage

• Participants recruited (by gender/age/region)
• Community trainings delivered
• Local maintainers onboarded

Data Production

• Hours recorded, validated, and released
• TTS‑ready hours curated
• Datasets and tools published

Ecosystem Health

• Citations and downloads
• Gap closure indicators in the public index

Team & governance

We combine linguistics, data engineering, product design, and community organizing. We maintain conflict‑of‑interest, data protection, and open licensing policies aligned with international best practices and African community norms.

Programs & Community — co‑design and field operations

Research & Data — standards, QA, analysis, documentation

Platform Engineering — collection tools, APIs, infrastructure

Digital Skills & Training — onboarding & education

Finance & Compliance — transparent reporting & controls

Advisory Board — linguistics, ethics, gender, AI safety, public interest tech

Collaboration & partners

We partner with universities & labs, civil society & media, public sector & development, and industry & startups. If you work on or care about African languages, we’d love to collaborate.

Frequently asked

Do you only work on Sukuma? Tap to toggle

No—we specialize in Sukuma and East African languages, and collaborate broadly across the continent.

Can you deliver 500+ hours per language? Tap to toggle

Yes—our operating model scales to large, multi‑speaker corpora with rigorous QA and documentation.

Are your tools open‑source? Tap to toggle

Yes—code and docs are published under permissive licenses, with installer scripts and Docker images.

How do you handle consent and privacy? Tap to toggle

We use clear, translated consent flows, de‑identify records by default, and enforce role‑based access.

Contact

Let’s build language AI that works for everyone—rooted in community, open by default, and ready for real‑world impact.

Email

ingoversetechhub@gmail.com

Phone

+254 705 286 159 +254 742 877 831

Web

www.ingoversetechhub.com

Your community engine for African language AI, data, and digital inclusion.