Jack Oraro

Jack Oraro is an undergraduate student at Maseno University studying Computer Science, and a Research Associate at MCAAI where he applies his software engineering skills to build the tools that power the centre's data collection programmes.

Jack's most significant contribution to date is the development of MCAAI's web-based voice collection platform — the primary interface through which community contributors record and submit Dholuo, Kikuyu, and other language samples for the African Next Voices and DhoNam initiatives. The platform handles audio recording, quality pre screening, contributor consent management, and metadata capture in a browser-based interface accessible on any internet-connected device. It has been used to collect thousands of hours of speech data across multiple language communities.

Beyond the voice collection platform, Jack contributes to MCAAI's broader software engineering infrastructure, assisting with the development and maintenance of internal tooling including data annotation interfaces, dataset management systems, and the web front-end components of the AI Farm Assistant platform.

Jack is mentored by Ezekiel Maina and Starnley Odiwuor, and is developing expertise in full stack web development, progressive web app architecture, and the engineering of human in the loop data collection systems. His work exemplifies MCAAI's commitment to involving undergraduate students in meaningful research engineering from the earliest stages of their academic careers.