Startup Spotlight: 9jaLingo

Founder: Chukwuka Okolie

Mission: Building AI language infrastructure for the way Africa speaks.

Language is the heart of culture, but in the rapidly evolving world of AI, many African languages risk being left behind. Enter 9jaLingo, a startup dedicated to building robust AI speech and translation infrastructure specifically for the Nigerian linguistic landscape.

Why it Matters

Most mainstream AI systems still struggle with African dialects, code-switching, and Nigerian Pidgin. 9jaLingo is solving this by creating a specialized backend that developers can integrate directly into their own apps and platforms.

What’s Under the Hood?

• Multilingual Support: High-quality translation and voice models for Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Nigerian Pidgin, and Nigerian English.
• Massive Voice Library: More than 240 unique Nigerian voice profiles powering realistic text-to-speech and voice cloning technology.
• Developer-First: An API-ready infrastructure designed for seamless integration.

The Current Milestone

Founder Chukwuka Okolie and his team have already developed production-ready AI speech models and released a public test demo on Hugging Face. They are currently seeking early backers to help scale their compute, inference, and data infrastructure as they move toward official incorporation.

"We believe African languages deserve proper AI infrastructure too, and we’re working hard to make that possible." — Chukwuka Okolie.

How to Support

• Connect: Reach out to the team at okolie@9jalingo.org.
• Test: Try out the live demo and provide feedback.