Through its “Voix du Togo” programme, Togo has been collecting voice recordings and texts in its national languages since early October. The aim is to develop AI applications that make public services, healthcare and justice more accessible to people who do not speak French.

The three-year programme was launched in Lomé on 2 October by the Ministry of Public Service Efficiency and Digital Transformation under Minister Cina Lawson. Via an online platform, citizens can record sentences, transcribe audio and translate texts. Contributions are paid and reviewed before use. The project is supported by, among others, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The pilot phase starts with Ewe, Kabiyè and Moba. For each language, the goal is 50 hours of validated audio, 6,000 translated sentence pairs and contributions from at least 500 speakers. In the long term, around 50 national languages are to be covered. The technical partner is Togo AI Lab, which tested the platform publicly in September. In future, patients could, for example, describe their symptoms in their own language.