My thoughts on the african AI space

Posted on Jul 21, 2025

At the moment, there’s certainly a lot of hype around Large Language Models. And for good reasons, they’ve unlocked several possibilities including text generation, advanced NLP, and who can forget agentic AI through JSON resopnses :|). However, a more overlooked but equally important area are the TTS and ASR models.

Apart from having the capacity to perform tasks more natural to the way we humans interact(through speech and listening), it can also bridge more gaps between non-technical individuals and technology products.

Take it from a key individual in artificial intelligence; Andrew NG. At the Langchain interrupt Conference, he says voice stack applications are “so underrated” and that “user friction to just getting them(product users) to use it is lower”. You can check out his full spitch at

But that’s not really what I’m excited about. Instead, I am more enthralled by an organization making these advancements possible at home. Spitch headed by Temi Babs, have created the most production ready Text-To-Speech and Speech-To-Text models for Nigerian Languages. At the moment, they support;

  • English
  • Yoruba
  • Igbo
  • Hausa
  • Armahic,..and they’re still planning on adding more african languages.

Furthermore, they have begun working on ensuring their models are aligned with frameworks/stacks that enable developers to seamlessly integrate their models into voice applications. Recently, they integrated their models into the Livekit framework (which you can learn more about here).

These moves, will allow for voice applications like:

  • Traditional Customer Support Agents.
  • Language learning platforms similar to Duolingo but for learning african languages.
  • Educational platforms that utilize TTS models for a better learning experiences.
  • Automatic Caption generation for content creation.
  • Transcription of meetings in various languages
  • Interactive and native virtual assistants
  • …and more.

In short, while companies like Openai, Google and Meta may amaze me with their innovations, home-based ones like Spitch excite and inspire me about the future of the Artificial Intelligence space.