A community project in Ebonyi State, Nigeria
Voices that have
never been heard.
We are building the first open speech and text dataset for the Izzi language cluster. Izzi, Ezaa, Ikwo, and Mgbo together have millions of speakers in Ebonyi State. None of them have a single hour of transcribed audio in any public archive.
The gap in numbers
Four figures that explain the project
datasets for the Izzi cluster
no corpus, no ASR, no benchmark
Verified absence, Izi language - Wikipediaof new African voice data from speakers 50+
elder voices are nearly absent
Lanfrica analysis of African Next VoicesWhat Olubridge is
We are recording speech and collecting text in Izzi, Ezaa, Ikwo, and Mgbo, four languages of Ebonyi State that share a cluster but sit outside Central Igbo. No dataset exists for any of them. We are building the first.
Read the backgroundWhy now
Only 2.4% of new African voice data comes from speakers older than fifty. The generation that holds the deepest vocabulary is still here. Voice AI trained without them will fail the people who need it most.
See the landscapeHow to help
You can record a session, fund a recording day, or connect us with a community leader. Each hour of clean elder speech is a data point that does not exist anywhere else.
Get involved“Onye wetara oji wetara ndu.”
The one who brings kola nut brings life.