Abantu AI, a Kenya-Based startup, has built a “deep learning” technology for natural language processing (NLP) which it claims translates from major world languages to indigenous African languages.
The company was created in September 2021 by James Mwaniki, who is also the CEO of MoVAS, a company that provides micro-lending services to telecom companies in Africa and Asia. Abantu AI says its developing AI-driven linguistic solutions for translating speech and text from local African languages into English or other international languages.
Kikuyu and Kiswahili, two languages spoken in Kenya and the larger East African region, are now being translated using Abantu’s solution, and it intends to translate other local languages in the African continent.
Mwaniki says his primary motivation for creating this solution is to create a tool that will help caregivers and health workers better understand their patients. According to him, NLP has advanced tremendously in other parts of the world but has lagged in Africa.
“Africa is a language-rich continent with a large number of people who cannot communicate in the main languages of the world, like English and French. It is thus difficult for such people to consume and give knowledge to and from the outside world without the help of a third party,” said Mwaniki. “This is the gap we saw and we decided to build tools to address this challenge.”
Abantu AI, which is self-funded, has built a proof of concept and got “better than anticipated” market response from the media, government, and health sectors. “The next step of our business, Mwaniki says, “will consist of refining our products, tailoring them to industry-specific demands, and marketing.”
In light of this, the firm is currently embarking on a fundraising campaign. “We are mostly looking at grants but are open to other types of funding. So far, we received grants from Amazon which helped us in offsetting training and hosting costs for our AI models, as this is usually the most expensive part of the AI industry,” said Mwaniki.
Abantu AI intends to extend its services in other African nations before the end of the year. As it stands, the company generates revenue through a subscription model in which customers subscribe to its services on use or recurring basis.
Mwaniki say Abantu AI is still in its infancy stage in terms of global standards.
“AI demands specialised skill sets that are difficult to find locally. It is also multidisciplinary, necessitating extensive knowledge in numerous fields. Tools for building and training models are not generally standardized, and there is a steep learning curve required to train any model well. And then there’s the prohibitive cost of training models for the majority of businesses,” he added.
