Language & Voice AI for Africa: From Data to Deployment and Impact

This seminar explores how language and voice AI systems can be built and scaled for African contexts—from community-driven data collection and multilingual foundation models to robust deployment and real-world applications across sectors such as agriculture, health, and public services. We discuss technical advances, evaluation challenges, and ecosystem partnerships needed to ensure these technologies work for Africa’s linguistic diversity and development priorities. The session includes a keynote address by Dr. Vukosi Marivate (University of Pretoria), an invited talk by Tavonga Siyavora (Google), a featured keynote by Dr. Tobi Olatunji (Intron), lightning talks by Kiplangat Korir (MsingiAI) and Dr. John Quinn (Sunbird AI), and finally a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Girmaw Abebe Tadesse (Microsoft). Panelists include Dr. George Musumba (KICTANet), Dr. Joyce Nabende Nakatumba (Makerere University), Muchai Mercy (Microsoft), and Yann Le Beux (YUX and Kitala AI). Learn more about Microsoft Research Lab – Africa, Nairobi: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/lab/microsoft-research-lab-africa-nairobi/seminars/