Lusaka, Zambia — 20 November 2024 — Lanfrica proudly announces that its flagship community project NaijaVoices was crowned winner of the Data Futures Showcase at Mozilla Festival (MozFest) Zambia 2024, a gathering that celebrates African innovators who are “flipping the script” on data ownership and cultural preservation.
Spotlight on the Data Futures Showcase
MozFest’s Data Futures Showcase highlights builders around the world developing tools and platforms that prioritize the needs and interests of their communities. In the fast-paced world of AI and data, the popular discourse and priorities are set by a small but vocal minority. This year’s cohort featured pioneering initiatives from Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa that tackle equitable data stewardship across the continent.
NaijaVoices: the largest African speech dataset
NaijaVoices is a 1,800‑hour, 5,000‑speaker speech‑text corpus spanning Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba. Built through a unique “data farming” model, the project rewards contributors, archives linguistic heritage, and fuels cutting‑edge speech technologies for Nigeria’s 200 million‑plus citizens. Its sustainable sharing model channels dataset revenues back to the community, underwriting continuous growth while ensuring fair benefit‑sharing and transparent licensing.
A Winning Presentation
Representing Lanfrica, Prof. Gloria M. T. Emezue delivered a dynamic showcase that impressed judges and peers alike. Her talk highlighted:
- Our unique data farming approach of NaijaVoices. Our “data farming”, in contrast to data mining which extracts and depletes data from providing communities, employs a reciprocal relationship (akin to farming) which ensures that providing communities are engaged in, empowered by, and mutually benefit from the data collection cultivation process.
- The unique sharing model of the NaijaVoices that enables sustainability for the community members. It is a circular sharing model that reinvests proceeds into contributor stipends, dataset expansion, and new language support, creating a self‑sustaining ecosystem.
Line‑up of African Builders
Other projects featured at the showcase included:
- Datawise Africa — “Datawise Africa Data Lab” (Kenya)
- Strathmore University, CIPIT — “Weighing AI’s Role in Preserving Indigenous Knowledge in Kenya” (Kenya)
- University of Pretoria, Data Science Law Lab — “Nwulite Obodo Open Data License” (South Africa)
For more information, visit naijavoices.com