MCAAI is an interdisciplinary research centre at Maseno University dedicated to language technology, disability inclusion, data sovereignty, and applied AI — built by and for the communities it serves.
The Maseno Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence (MCAAI) is an interdisciplinary research centre housed at Maseno University in Kisumu County, Kenya. We bring together linguists, computer scientists, disability advocates, and community organisers under one roof united by the belief that AI must be built with communities, not merely for them.
Founded in 2023 by Dr. Lilian Wanzare, MCAAI emerged from a clear gap: while global AI capabilities were advancing rapidly, the languages, contexts, and lived realities of East African communities remained largely absent from the datasets and models shaping the technology. We set out to change that.
Today, MCAAI is recognised across the continent as a pioneer in community-controlled AI data governance stewarding corpora in Dholuo, Swahili, Kenyan Sign Language, and other regional languages while ensuring the communities that power our data share meaningfully in its benefits.
Our work spans the full pipeline from raw data collection to deployed applications. Through programmes like African Next Voices, we organise community recording sessions that gather thousands of hours of speech in languages that global tech companies routinely overlook. These corpora are then used to train speech recognition, text-to-speech, and natural language understanding systems tailored to African contexts.
In parallel, our KSL AI project — co-funded by Data Science Africa — is building the first large-scale dataset and recognition model for Kenyan Sign Language, creating a foundation for real-time interpretation tools that can transform access to education, healthcare, and public services for the deaf community.
We also convene the research community. As host of IndabaX Kenya, we create space for practitioners across East Africa to share findings, forge collaborations, and push the frontier of African AI research together.
Everything we do traces back to these commitments — to the communities we serve, the researchers we train, and the partners we choose.
Develop speech, text, and multimodal datasets for underrepresented African languages — starting with the communities of Western Kenya — and release them under open, community-controlled licences.
Create AI-powered tools for Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) recognition and interpretation, ensuring deaf and hard-of-hearing communities are not left behind by the AI revolution.
Establish and demonstrate frameworks for community-controlled data governance, so that the people who generate data retain meaningful rights over how it is used and who benefits.
Train the next generation of African AI practitioners through mentorship, workshops, and events like IndabaX Kenya — building a self-sustaining research ecosystem in East Africa.
Collaborate with universities, civil society, and industry partners who share our commitment to AI that is accountable, transparent, and genuinely beneficial to the communities it touches.
MCAAI is proud to announce that Maseno University will host the PIIRS Global Seminar – Summer 2026 , themed "Technology for African Languages in the Digital Age…
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On 1 April 2026, the Maseno Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence (MCAAI) was officially inaugurated at the Maseno University Amphitheatre in a ceremony at…
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2025 was a year of outstanding individual and collective recognition for MCAAI members at regional and international AI events. We are proud to celebrate the fo…
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