Related papers: Hello Afrika: Speech Commands in Kinyarwanda
Hausa language belongs to the Afroasiatic phylum, and with more first-language speakers than any other sub-Saharan African language. With a majority of its speakers residing in the Northern and Southern areas of Nigeria and the Republic of…
Dialogue generation is an important NLP task fraught with many challenges. The challenges become more daunting for low-resource African languages. To enable the creation of dialogue agents for African languages, we contribute the first…
Large language models (LLMs) have achieved impressive results in a wide range of natural language applications. However, they often struggle to recognize low-resource languages, in particular African languages, which are not well…
Many personal devices have transitioned from visual-controlled interfaces to speech-controlled interfaces to reduce costs and interactive friction, supported by the rapid growth in capabilities of speech-controlled interfaces, e.g., Amazon…
Oral narrative skills are strong predictors of later literacy development. This study examines the features of oral narratives from children who were identified by experts as requiring intervention. Using simple machine learning methods, we…
Nowadays, speech is becoming a more common, if not standard, interface to technology. This can be seen in the trend of technology changes over the years. Increasingly, voice is used to control programs, appliances and personal devices…
High-resource language models often fall short in the African context, where there is a critical need for models that are efficient, accessible, and locally relevant, even amidst significant computing and data constraints. This paper…
All of the countries within Africa experience a serious shortage of medical professionals, particularly specialists, a problem that is only exacerbated by high emigration of doctors with better prospects overseas. As a result, those that…
This paper presents a spell checker and correction tool specifically designed for Wolof, an under-represented spoken language in Africa. The proposed spell checker leverages a combination of a trie data structure, dynamic programming, and…
The rapid dissemination and adoption of smart speakers has enabled substantial opportunities to improve human health. Just as the introduction of the mobile phone led to considerable health innovation, smart speaker computing systems carry…
Speech is essential for human communication, yet millions of people face impairments such as dysarthria, stuttering, and aphasia conditions that often lead to social isolation and reduced participation. Despite recent progress in automatic…
Kenya, known for its linguistic diversity, faces unique challenges and promising opportunities in advancing Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies, particularly for its underrepresented indigenous languages. This survey provides a…
This work consists of creating a system of the Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) based on a system of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for the Arabic language using the tool CMU Sphinx3 [1], based on the approach of HMM. To this…
In this paper, we discuss the formalized approach for generating and estimating symbols (and alphabets), which can be communicated by the wide range of non-verbal means based on specific user requirements (medium, priorities, type of…
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming education and the workforce, but access to AI learning opportunities in Africa remains uneven. With rapid demographic shifts and growing labour market pressures, AI has become a strategic…
We describe Howl, an open-source wake word detection toolkit with native support for open speech datasets, like Mozilla Common Voice and Google Speech Commands. We report benchmark results on Speech Commands and our own freely available…
Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently garnered significant attention, primarily for their capabilities in text-based interactions. However, natural human interaction often relies on speech, necessitating a shift towards voice-based…
The rise of wearable smart devices raises unprecedented opportunities for self-improvement through ubiquitous behavior tracking and guidance. However, the design of effective wearable behavior intervention systems remains relatively…
A system based on speech recognition is proposed for pilot assist decision-making. It is based on a HIL aircraft simulation platform and uses the microcontroller SPCE061A as the central processor to achieve better reliability and higher…
Expanding the language coverage of speech technology has the potential to improve access to information for many more people. However, current speech technology is restricted to about one hundred languages which is a small fraction of the…