Swahili live captions and productivity tool for lectures

The WHO's Regional Office for Africa has projected that the burden of hearing loss across Africa could rise to 54 million people by 2030 without urgent intervention. Kenya's National Population Census 2019 recorded 153,381 deaf people aged five and above — the vast majority (129,518) in rural areas with limited access to educational support services. A paper published in PMC (PMC10854416) documenting hearing loss detection strategies in Kenya noted that nearly all countries in sub-Saharan Africa screen 0–1% of newborns for hearing loss, meaning most hearing impairments in the region go undetected until school age or later, delaying intervention significantly.

Kenya's 2010 Constitution recognized Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) as the country's third official language — a landmark policy achievement. In practice, however, KSL interpreter provision in university settings remains extremely limited. Neither the University of Nairobi nor most East African public universities maintain systematic real-time captioning or interpreter provision for deaf and hard of hearing students in ordinary lectures. Tanzania similarly lacks national infrastructure for deaf higher education, and its sign language (TASHL) has no formal university interpreter training programme at scale.

Hearing loss carries an estimated annual cost of US$27 billion across Africa, according to the WHO African Region status report on ear and hearing care — a figure that captures both direct healthcare costs and productivity losses. For a deaf or hard of hearing student in Nairobi or Dar es Salaam, the lecture hall is one of the most acute access gaps: the content is delivered in a language whose complexity is manageable with hearing, but nearly inaccessible without it — and no institutional solution exists.