Funder
Duration
2023-2024
Keywords (Technologies and Domain)
Language Technologies, Automatic Speech Recognition
Waxal Voice collection
Uganda is home to over 52 local langauges. However, many of these lack adequate speech datasets. This project aimed to address this gap by collecting crowdsourced speech and text data for diverse African languages. Our goal was to leverage this data to research innovative architectures and deep learning algorithms for multilingual NLP systems (including Speech, NMT, Q&A, LM). These systems would be robust to variations in accents. Ultimately, Waxal strives to make NLP systems more inclusive with the development and inclusive of richer image prompt and transcribed datasets for Ugandan languages.
Outputs (Datasets, publications, models)
Image prompt speech datasets. Collected 200 hours for Luganda, Runyankole, Lumasaaba, Lusoga and Acholi and transcribed 20 hours for Luganda, Runyankole, Lumasaaba, Lusoga and Acholi.