Tonative

Dataset provider for organisations training, aligning, and evaluating AI models on African languages and industry domains.

Email: [email protected]

[Tonative @tonative_org]

As we celebrate Tonative's first anniversary, we're excited to introduce TonalKeys - our Chrome extension designed to make typing African language characters and diacritics simpler.

Language should never be a barrier to creating, communicating, or preserving our stories online. TonalKeys is one more step toward making African languages easier to use in the digital world.

How to use:
1. Install TonalKeys on your desktop Chrome browser:
https://t.co/R2YSa5SPKq

2. Once installed, simply toggle it ON whenever you need to write on any web page, and select your language of choice.

3. A floating keyboard will appear on your page, whether it's a Google Doc, an email, or anything else. If it doesn't appear right away, just refresh the page.

4. Whenever you need a special character, click the corresponding key on the floating keyboard. That's it.

We'd love to hear any feedback you have as we continue to improve it.

Thank you for being part of our first year. 🎉

#TonativeTurnsOne #TonalKeys #AfricanLanguageTechnology

[Tonative @tonative_org]

We're excited to announce our Guest speaker for the Tonative × Deep Learning Indaba @DeepIndaba 2026 Workshop.

Please join us in welcoming:
Dr. Lilian Wanzare - Co-founder of KenCorpus and Research Lead at the Maseno Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence (MCAAI), with a decade of experience curating datasets across Kenyan languages including Dholuo, Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Maasai, Somali and Kenyan Sign Language (KSL). As the Principal Investigator for KenCorpus, African Next Voices - Kenya and AI4KSL, she led the collection of some of the largest speech, text and sign language datasets for Kenyan languages, working directly with language communities throughout. Her research centres the empowerment of human data infrastructure as foundational to the AI development pipeline.

In this session, Dr. Wanzare will share insights on the capacity building for African language data curators, the infrastructure needed for a scalable curation pipeline and how to govern these datasets.

Our workshop is open to anyone attending the Deep Learning Inbada Conference this year, and is interested in the data layer of language technologies.

Kindly signify interest via the DLI registration portal:
https://t.co/6ADpdI3ys9

📅 Date: August 6, 2026

#Tonative #DeepLearningIndaba #DataAnnotation

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Our paper has been accepted at Deep Learning Indaba 2026! 🎉

We're excited to announce that our research paper, "Directional Hallucinations in African Neural Machine Translation: How Source Language Typology Shapes Translation Faithfulness Across Six African Languages," has been accepted for presentation at Deep Learning Indaba 2026.

This work examines how translation quality changes depending on the source language and shows that many translation errors in African languages are driven more by data availability than by the languages themselves. Our findings demonstrate that improving African AI requires greater investment in high-quality, community-driven language datasets not simply larger models.

The research evaluates over 36,000 translations across six African languages using leading multilingual machine translation systems, contributing new insights into building more faithful and inclusive AI for Africa.

Congratulations to our authors. We look forward to sharing our work at Deep Learning Indaba 2026.

#DeepLearningIndaba2026 #AIForAfrica #AfricanLanguages #MachineTranslation #NLP #ResponsibleAI #Research #Tonative

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Celebrating the people behind our first year. 💚🧡

As Tonative marks one year, we're taking a moment to recognize the incredible community leads who have helped shape our journey.

From coordinating language communities and leading research to developing the software tools needed for our work, to communications and community engagement, each person has contributed to every datasets we have built and the stories we tell today.

Thank you so much for all the contributions you have led at Tonative. Looking forward to our next chapter.

Happy Anniversary, Team! 🎉

[Tonative @tonative_org]

We are incredibly proud to have been a data curation partner for @ml_collective by providing and validating the datasets that fuel their research.

Huge congratulations to the entire MLC Africa team for consistently putting African research on the global stage. ✨

Looking forward to @DeepIndaba 2026.

[Deep Learning Indaba @DeepIndaba]

Community Showcase: @ml_collective Africa 🔥

Building world-class AI research from Africa, for the world!

ML Collective Africa is a pan-African research community empowering the next generation of African AI researchers through mentorship, paper reading groups, and collaborative projects. From publishing at top-tier venues like NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, EMNLP, AAAI, and MICCAI, to securing prestigious global fellowships, their members are making remarkable contributions to the global AI landscape.

Their impact goes far beyond peer review. Through active grassroots fundraising, they have continuously supported members to attend multiple Deep Learning Indaba conferences while fostering deep collaborations with vital ecosystem partners like @MasakhaneNLP and @tonative_org . They are proving that Africa is a key creator and leader in the future of intelligence.

Watch their community showcase to see how collaboration, curiosity, and research excellence are shaping the continent's tech ecosystem.

Join the conversation from anywhere!

While in-person registrations for Lagos are closed, you can still experience the magic, keynotes, and deep learning sessions of the Indaba online.

💻 Virtual Indaba: Registrations are open to join #DLI2026 virtually! Secure your pass here 👉 https://t.co/d74RjD6wC6

#DLI2026 #Indaba2026

[Tonative @tonative_org]

@Crails_Inc @nvidia @Makerere These results are very promising. Should you need any custom datasets across diverse African languages or domains to expand the scope of your model coverage, we'll be happy to collaborate.

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Happy New Month from all of us at Tonative 🥂

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Happy 1st Anniversary to Tonative! 🎉

One year of building patnerships, curating datasets and advancing inclusive AI for African languages.

Thank you to everyone who believed in this mission

Here's to many more years of collaboration. 🥂

[Young People In Tech /YPIT/ @Ypeopleintech]

The question wasn't whether Africa could build AI.

The question was:
What does it take to build an AI ecosystem that actually works?

That was one of our favourite conversations at #TheArtificialFuture.

[Tonative @tonative_org]

AI is only as good as the data behind it and data is as good as the way it was curated.

At #DLI2026, Tonative is organising a workshop on "Building Africa's Human Data Infrastructure for Sustainable AI."

We'll discuss how the community-driven data pipelined for African languages through dialogue, shared practive and collective roadmapping with the aim of improving the human infrastructure behind data curation.

If you got accepted at the DLI 2026 Conference, kindly enroll at our workshop via the acceptance portal.

#DeepLearningIndabaWorkshops #DLI2026 #Tonative

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Team Tonative at #TheArtificialFuture Conference 📸🌍

A great day of learning, networking, and discussing how we can build more inclusive AI systems that represent African languages and communities.

More work ahead. More impact to create. 🚀

#Tonative #AIForAfrica #AfricanLanguages

[Tonative @tonative_org]

📸 Moments from #TheArtificialFuture Conference.

We had a great time discussing what it takes to build AI in Africa and sharing Tonative's work on African language dataset curation.

Thank you to YPIT @Ypeopleintech , fellow panelists, and everyone who joined the conversation. 🌍

#AIForAfrica #AfricanLanguages #Tonative

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Happening NOW at #ArtificialFutureConference! 🎙️
⚡Our very own @sharonibejih is on stage discussing "What it actually takes to build AI in Africa." 🌍Follow this thread for live insights on infrastructure, talent, and scaling local AI solutions!
#ArtificialFutureConference #AIAfrica #WomenInTech #Leadership # #YPITAF #AfricanLanguages #AIAfrica #LagosAI

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Ready to learn from the best in the industry?

💡Our team is incredibly proud to see our very own Founder Sharon Ibejih @sharonibejih featured alongside this amazing lineup of speakers for Young People In Tech (YPIT) @Ypeopleintech at THE ARTIFICIAL FUTURE CONFERENCE. Where She will be diving deep into Pillars of a Functioning AI Ecosystem.
#YPITAF #ArtificialFuture #AfricanLanguages #AIAfrica #TechAfrica #LagosAI #BuildAfrica

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Link has been updated:
https://t.co/qOH2Wq4wVp

[Tonative @tonative_org]

📢 Missed the first registration window?

Good news: Registration for the Storytelling & Linguistics Hackathon has been reopened.

If you have a story to tell in your native language, this is your chance to join the challenge, win prizes, and contribute to African language preservation.

Register here: https://t.co/tLnGe92dBu
Submit by June 6 to stand a chance to win $100.🎙️📚

#Tonative #AfricanLanguages #StorytellingAndLinguistics #Hackathon

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Dholuo: Jasigana agonie sigana? Eh, gona sigandi mamit no!
English: Can I tell you a story? Yes, tell me your interesting story!

"Sitting by the fire, roasting maize..." This is how traditional story telling started in Luo households. Africa has some of the richest storytelling traditions on earth. So much of our culture, our moral compass, and our ways of thinking is buried in folklore that the elderly shared under the moonlight.

Real meaning is also carried in how we say the things we say, not just what is being said. These nuances are incredibly hard to carry over in word-for-word translations, and it's compounded by the fact that so little of it has ever been written down. This makes building Artificial Intelligence for Africans harder than it needs to be.

That's the gap we are solving at Tonative, and we are happy to partner with @Ypeopleintech to host this track at The Artificial Future.

We want you to tell a short story in your native language. You are to simply submit the audio and the transcript files of your story. Whatever you create will be a part of a collection of African Stories that will be published, with your name as part of the contributors.

Each story will be evaluated by our team of native linguists and prizes will be won.

The hackathon starts on May 30 and runs till June 6, 2026 but registration ends tomorrow.

Click the link below to register now ✨ :
https://t.co/tLnGe92dBu

[Tonative @tonative_org]

We're grateful for the response to our Bridging the Data Skills Gap for African Languages workshop. 🌍

⭐ 4.6/5 average rating

Participants described the session as informative, inspiring, and eye-opening for the future of African language representation in AI.

Thank you to everyone who joined us. More to come. 🚀

#AIForAfrica #AfricanLanguages #Tonative #NLP #TheArtificialFuture #YPIT

[Tonative @tonative_org]

🌍 As part of #TheArtificialFuture by @Ypeopleintech, Tonative is hosting Bridging the Data Skills Gap for African Languages on building language datasets for AI
Learn language documentation, translation, validation, and dataset curation for African languages.

📅 May 26, 2026
🕔 5 PM WAT
💻 Virtual

🔗 https://t.co/NNqiE92xnO

#AIForAfrica #AfricanLanguages #Tonative #YPIT

[Tonative @tonative_org]

Happy New Month from all of us at Tonative💗