Togo Pioneers AI Initiative to Digitize Indigenous Languages for Public Services

Togo has launched a significant national program called "Voix du Togo" (Voice of Togo) aimed at developing artificial intelligence tools capable of understanding the country's diverse local languages. This three-year initiative seeks to enhance access to public services for citizens who do not speak French, by enabling them to interact with government, healthcare, and justice systems in their preferred native tongues.

The project, spearheaded by Cina Lawson, Minister of Public Service Efficiency and Digital Transformation, involves collecting audio recordings, written transcriptions, and translated texts. Citizens can contribute through an online platform by recording sentences, transcribing audio, and translating materials. This crowdsourced data will then be validated and used to train AI models for language processing. The initial phase will concentrate on Ewe, Kabiyè, and Moba, with plans to expand to other national languages.

"Voix du Togo" has ambitious targets, aiming for 50 hours of validated audio, 6,000 translated sentence pairs, and contributions from at least 500 speakers for each of the three initial languages. The resulting datasets are crucial for building AI applications that will allow citizens to describe symptoms to medical professionals or engage with administrative bodies without a language barrier. This aligns with the Togolese government's broader strategy to bolster its capacity in AI development and deployment.

The Ministry is collaborating with Togo AI Lab, an organization dedicated to applying AI across various sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and education. Public tests of the platform were conducted in Lomé in September 2026 to gather user feedback and ensure usability before the wider rollout. This foundational work in creating local language resources is expected to foster AI tools that genuinely reflect Togo's linguistic heritage and make digital public services more inclusive.