Unique
Truly offline — desktop & mobile
Native desktop and mobile apps run a full database on-device, so you can label with zero signal. Work auto-syncs with a three-way merge when you reconnect. No lost annotations.
Annotation that works where other tools quit.
AfriAnnotate is the open-source, mobile-first annotation platform for African languages — fully offline, with built-in speech capture, automatic quality control, agreement, and consent baked in.
100%
offline-capable
11+
audio QC checks
Apache 2.0
open source
Built on Label StudioApache-2.0 licensedFor MasakhaneEthioNLPHausaNLP
The problem
Most annotation tools assume a desktop, a fast connection, and a Latin keyboard.
That leaves out the people best placed to build African language datasets — native speakers annotating from a phone, on mobile data, in scripts those tools never planned for. AfriAnnotate flips the defaults: mobile-first, offline-first, and multilingual from the ground up.
Why AfriAnnotate
What you won't find in other tools
It started as Label Studio, then added the things African language data work actually needs — and that no other annotation tool ships out of the box.
Unique
Record speech inside the task
A built-in recorder with a live signal/SNR meter lets native speakers contribute voice data straight from the browser — no external app, no upload step.
Unique
Automatic audio quality control
Every clip is scored on 11+ checks — SNR, clipping, silence, VAD, plus optional Whisper transcript match, language ID and forced alignment. Bad takes are flagged or sent back automatically.
Review & agreement built in
Reviewer roles, a sampled review queue, and inter-annotator agreement per task — Fleiss' κ, IoU, F1 for NER, ICC for ratings — with low-agreement strategies you control.
Unique
Consent & ethics, first-class
Versioned consent (data use, voice release, guardian/minor, payment terms) with tamper-evident, hash-chained signatures captured before anyone annotates. Built for data sovereignty.
Built for African languages
Per-user language, localized UI and multi-script input — and recruit verified native speakers straight from the AfriFinder directory into your project, with consent baked in.
Ready-made templates
Annotation types made for African data
Start from a template, not a blank config — including ones you won't find elsewhere, like Code-Switching (language ID per span), aspect-based sentiment, machine translation, NER, and voice collection. Tweak the labeling config or bring your own.
The difference
Other tools vs AfriAnnotate
Other annotation tools
Desktop-only, needs a connection
No built-in audio capture or QC
Agreement metrics bolted on later
Consent handled off-platform
Latin-centric input
Find annotators yourself
AfriAnnotate
Offline-first desktop & mobile, auto-sync
In-browser recording with automatic QC
Reviewer roles + IAA (κ, IoU, F1, ICC) built in
Tamper-evident consent before annotation
Multi-script input and per-user language
Recruit verified speakers from AfriFinder
One app, every task
From a tweet's sentiment to a forced-aligned recording
Audio recording Transcription Translation Sentiment Named entities Speech / ASR LLM evaluation Ranking Multimodal
How it works
Collect. Annotate. Validate.
01
Collect
Researchers and community leads publish tasks with clear scope, target language, and guidelines.
02
Annotate
Annotators label on their phone — online or offline — in their native language and script.
03
Validate
Reviewers check agreement and sign off, so every dataset ships with a quality trail.
Start annotating in your language today
Open AfriAnnotate in your browser — no install needed — and start collecting and labelling data wherever the language is spoken.