Apps
We work directly with local communities to co-create inclusive speech technology. Through innovation sprints and hackathons, we bring together university students, developers, speech therapists, and people with lived experience of speech impairments to build solutions that address real communication challenges. By providing open-source datasets, trained ASR models, and mentorship, we empower local innovators to develop applications tailored to their communities' needs—ensuring the technology grows organically from the people who will use it.
Kasa Noma
Problem Addressed
People with speech impairments are excluded from digital systems due to the lack of locally trained and inclusive speech technologies.
An AI-based speech technology solution designed to support communication for people with speech impairments using locally grounded speech data.
The solution supports digital inclusion and contributes to the development of scalable African ASR models with strong real-world applicability.
Following the hackathon, the team has gone on to formally register their own company and is actively translating their innovation into a viable business solution aimed at reaching users at scale. The innovators are now focused on product refinement, partnerships, and pathways to deployment that enable broad societal impact.