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About Us
Welcome to tonemarks, where we're pioneering AI solutions specifically for Africa! Our mission is to build artificial intelligence systems that truly understand and represent African languages, cultures, and contexts. We're focused on creating inclusive AI that addresses the unique challenges and opportunities across the African continent.
At tonemarks, we specialize in developing advanced language models and computer vision systems that recognize and respect Africa's rich diversity. Our team of AI researchers, engineers, and linguistic experts work together to close representation gaps and build technology that serves all Africans. Join us as we lead the charge in making AI work for Africa, creating solutions that are by Africans, for Africans.
Challenges in African AI Development
Building AI for Africa faces unique challenges that require innovative solutions. Here are the major hurdles we're working to overcome:
Low-Resource Data
Most African languages lack sufficient digital data to train robust AI models, creating a significant gap in representation.
Example:
Twi, spoken by over 11 million people in Ghana and surrounding regions, has significantly low speech and text data available for NLP training. While English has billions of tokens available, languages like Twi have little to no publicly accessible training data, limiting AI accessibility for millions of speakers. [Reference: Masakhane NLP Consortium (2021): "African NLP Resource Report" 📄]
AI Language Bias
Current AI systems struggle to understand and process African languages, creating barriers to technology access for millions of people.
Example:
Major AI assistants like ChatGPT incorrectly distinguish between homographs that differ only in tone marks, such as 'ògùn' (medicine), 'ogún' (property), and 'ogun' (war) in Yoruba - a critical distinction in tonal languages. Studies show up to 65% error rates when processing such distinctions in Yoruba, Igbo, and other tonal African languages. [Reference: Adebara et al. (2023): "Towards Building Low-Resource Tonal NLP Tools" 📄]
Computer Vision Bias
Image recognition systems fail to accurately identify and interpret visual elements specific to African contexts and phenotypes.
Example:
AI medical imaging tools show a 37% lower accuracy rate when analyzing symptoms on darker skin tones according to a 2022 Stanford study. Similarly, systems trained to identify traditional African clothing items misclassify them 42% more often than Western garments. [Reference: Stanford HAI (2022): "AI Index Report" pp. 123-127 📄]
Health Data Bias
Medical AI models trained primarily on non-African populations often perform poorly when applied to African health contexts.
Example:
According to the Lancet Digital Health (2021), AI diagnostic tools for malaria detection showed 28% lower accuracy when used in rural African clinics compared to urban settings, as training data predominantly came from well-equipped facilities. [Reference: Owoyemi et al. (2021): "Artificial intelligence for healthcare in Africa" 📄]
Our Projects
At toneMarks, we're building practical AI solutions that address real challenges in the African context. Here's how we're making a difference:
ToneSpeech: Voice Recognition for African Languages
A voice recognition system specifically designed for African languages with complex tonal patterns.
The Challenge:
Existing speech recognition systems perform poorly on African languages due to limited training data and inability to properly process tonal variations essential to meaning. [Reference: UNESCO (2022): "Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence" Section 25-27 📄]
Our Solution:
We've developed a specialized acoustic model that accurately captures tonal features and created a diverse dataset of over 200,000 voice samples across 5 major African languages. Our system achieves 85% accuracy, a 40% improvement over generic solutions. See our interactive demo on the right to experience our technology firsthand.
Try Our Demo:
Look to the right to experience our interactive ToneSpeech demo! Test our speech recognition technology directly in your browser. Just click the "Try Interactive Demo" button to get started.
Interactive Demo
Try our technology live!
ToneVision: Medical Image Analysis for African Populations
AI-powered medical imaging tool calibrated for diverse African populations and healthcare contexts.
The Challenge:
Leveraging AI-powered medical imaging tools for red blood cell analysis, malnutrition assessment, malaria parasite detection, and other conditions prevalent in Africa presents significant challenges due to limited region-specific training data and infrastructure constraints. [Reference: WHO (2021): "Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health" pp. 78-85 📄]
Our Solution:
We are currently researching advanced computer vision models specifically designed to work with limited resources while maintaining high accuracy for African healthcare contexts. Our work focuses on optimizing algorithms for malaria detection, anemia screening, and nutritional status assessment. We are actively seeking partners in the healthcare sector and government agencies to integrate our AI expertise in solving these critical challenges.
ToneLingua Africa: Multilingual NLP Pipeline
An end-to-end natural language processing system supporting 30 African languages.
The Challenge:
There is a significant lack of development in African education solutions and software creating educational assistants for African education. For instance, according to the EdTech Hub Africa Report 2023, less than 5% of educational technology solutions effectively incorporate African languages and educational contexts. [Reference: EdTech Hub (2023): "Educational Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa" pp. 42-56 📄]
Our Solution:
We created a cross-lingual embedding model that leverages linguistic similarities between related African languages, built specialized tokenizers that handle complex morphology, and developed data augmentation techniques that effectively multiply the available training data by 8x. Join our educational alliance to implement these solutions in your context.
Preserving African Heritage Through Technology
At toneMarks, we're not just building AI - we're preserving and celebrating Africa's rich cultural heritage. Our technology helps document, analyze, and share the diverse traditions that make Africa unique.
Yoruba Drumming Tradition
Partner With Us
Building AI systems that truly work for Africa requires collaboration. Join us in creating technology that empowers African communities and represents African cultures authentically.
Why Partner With Us?
toneMarks brings together a diverse team of AI researchers, linguists, and technologists with deep expertise in African contexts. With networks of collaborators across the continent—from universities in Ghana and South Africa to tech hubs in Nigeria and Kenya—we offer unparalleled insight into the region's technological needs and opportunities.
We believe that the most impactful AI solutions for Africa will come from collaborative efforts that combine technical expertise with local knowledge. By partnering with us, you become part of a growing network dedicated to creating AI that truly serves African communities.
Research Collaboration
Join forces with our team on innovative AI research focused on African contexts and languages. We want to partner with you to build lasting solutions that address Africa's unique technological challenges.
Benefits:
- Co-authorship on academic publications
- Joint grant applications for research funding
- Knowledge exchange with our team of experts
Data Partnership
Contribute to building better AI for Africa by sharing data or helping with data collection efforts. Together, we can create lasting solutions that empower African communities with technology that truly understands them.
Benefits:
- Early access to models trained on the data
- Recognition in all resulting publications
- Customized data collection solutions
- Technical support for data integration
Commercial Integration
Integrate our specialized AI solutions into your products or services. By partnering with us, you'll help build lasting technological infrastructure that serves African markets with culturally-relevant AI.
Benefits:
- Access to our API for African language processing
- Custom model development for your specific needs
- Technical implementation support
- Discounted rates for startups and social enterprises
Educational Alliance
Partner with us to bring AI education and resources to academic institutions across Africa. Together, we can build lasting educational frameworks that prepare the next generation of African AI innovators.
Benefits:
- AI curriculum customized for African contexts
- Workshops and training for faculty and students
- Access to educational tools and resources
- Internship and research opportunities for students
Don't see what you're looking for?
We're open to various forms of collaboration. Reach out to discuss how we can work together to advance AI in Africa.