Google & African Institutions Launch New Project

Google and a consortium of leading African research institutions announced the launch of WAXAL, a large-scale, openly accessible speech dataset designed to catalyze research and build more inclusive AI technologies.

The WAXAL dataset was developed over three years with funding from Google; the project features 1,250 hours of transcribed natural speech and over 20 hours of high-quality studio recordings designed to build high-fidelity synthetic voices.

While voice-enabled technologies have become common in much of the world, a profound scarcity of high-quality speech data has prevented their development for most of Africa’s 2,000+ languages. This has excluded hundreds of millions of people from accessing technology in their native tongues.

“The ultimate impact of WAXAL is the empowerment of people in Africa,” said Aisha Walcott-Bryantt, Head of Google Research Africa. “This dataset provides the critical foundation for students, researchers, and entrepreneurs to build technology on their own terms, in their own languages, finally reaching over 100 million people. We look forward to seeing African innovators use this data to create everything from new educational tools to voice-enabled services that create tangible economic opportunities across the continent.”

A central principle of the project was to ensure it was built by and for the community. African academic and community organizations, including Makerere University (Uganda), the University of Ghana, and Digital Umuganda (Rwanda), led the data collection with guidance from Google experts. These partner institutions retain full ownership of the data, establishing a new framework for equitable, partnership-led AI development.

“For AI to have a real impact in Africa, it must speak our languages and understand our contexts. The WAXAL dataset gives our researchers the high-quality data they need to build speech technologies that reflect our unique communities. In Uganda, it has already strengthened our local research capacity and supported new student- and faculty-led projects.”- Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende, Senior Lecturer at Makerere University’s School of Computing and Information Technology.

The dataset covers the following languages: Acholi, Akan, Dagaare, Dagbani, Dholuo, Ewe, Fante, Fulani (Fula), Hausa, Igbo, Ikposo (Kposo), Kikuyu, Lingala, Luganda, Malagasy, Masaaba, Nyankole, Rukiga, Shona, Soga (Lusoga), Swahili, and Yoruba.

“For us at the University of Ghana, WAXAL’s impact goes beyond the data itself. It has empowered us to build our own language resources and train a new generation of AI researchers. Over 7,000 volunteers joined us because they wanted their voices and languages to belong in the digital future. Today, that collective effort has sparked an ecosystem of innovation in fields like health, education, and agriculture. This proves that when the data exists, possibility expands everywhere.” – Prof. Isaac Wiafe, Associate Professor, University of Ghana.