Nigerian Engineer Creates AI Tool To Preserve Yoruba Language

A 23-year-old Nigerian engineer, Ikeoluwa Abioye, has developed an artificial intelligence-powered platform aimed at preserving and promoting the Yoruba language.

Abioye, who graduated from Dartmouth College in the United States, unveiled the innovation -named Alarino – in a statement sent to LEADERSHIP yesterday.

The platform, designed as a digital resource, focuses on providing accurate Yoruba translations complete with tone marks (diacritics), a key linguistic feature often missing from existing translation tools.

“Yoruba is considered a low-resource language in natural language processing, which means reliable tools and data are scarce,” Abioye explained.

She said her personal struggle with accessing correctly spelled Yoruba words while living abroad inspired her to create the tool.

According to her, existing online translators routinely fail to provide tone marks, leading to confusion and incorrect meanings.

“What started as a personal frustration soon became a wider mission to create a resource for millions of Yoruba speakers, learners, and developers.

“Alarino, which is open-source, aims to support educators, students, native speakers, and AI developers by offering a rich, curated dataset of properly accented Yoruba words.

“I want Alarino to become the most trusted resource for Yoruba learning and translation. More importantly, I want it to remind us that our languages deserve a place in the digital future,” Abioye said.