---
language:
  - sw
  - luo
  - bxk
  - lri
  - rag
license: cc-by-4.0
task_categories:
  - text-generation
  - text-classification
tags:
  - swahili
  - kiswahili
  - dholuo
  - lubukusu
  - lumarachi
  - lulogooli
  - kenyan-languages
  - low-resource-languages
  - african-languages
  - text-corpus
pretty_name: KenCorpus Text
size_categories:
  - 1K<n<10K
---

# KenCorpus Text: A Kenyan Multilingual Text Corpus

## Dataset Description

**KenCorpus Text** is a multilingual text corpus for Kenyan languages, collected from language communities including indigenous stories, student compositions, native language media stations, and publishers. The corpus goes beyond conventional religious texts to represent everyday language use.

Three languages were selected: **Kiswahili**, **Luhya** (dialects: Lumarachi, Logooli, Lubukusu), and **Dholuo**.

## Dataset Statistics

| Language | Files | Source |
|----------|-------|--------|
| Swahili | 2,585 | Community texts |
| Swahili (Tweets) | 324 | Social media |
| Dholuo | 166 | Community texts |
| Lumarachi | 449 | Community texts |
| Lubukusu | 16 | Community texts |
| Logooli | 247 | Community texts |

## Data Fields

| Column | Type | Description |
|--------|------|-------------|
| text | string | Full text content |
| language | string | Language (Swahili, Dholuo, Lubukusu, Lumarachi, Logooli, Luhya_Bukusu, etc.) |
| genre | string | Genre (Culture, News, Creative_writing, Exam, Agriculture, etc.) |
| source | string | Data source (Community, Educational_Institution, Media, Publisher, etc.) |
| title | string | Title of the text if available |
| story_id | string | Unique identifier matching the KenCorpus metadata |
| source_type | string | Source category (community_text, tweets) |

### Example Record

```python
{
    'text': 'HISTORIA YA SHULE YA UPILI YA OLEFREMA...',
    'language': 'Swahili',
    'genre': 'Creative_writing',
    'source': 'Educational_Institution',
    'title': 'Historia ya shule',
    'story_id': '3510',
    'source_type': 'community_text'
}
```

---

## Usage

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

# Load the dataset
dataset = load_dataset("Kencorpus/KenCorpus_text")

# Access samples
print(dataset['train'][0])

# Filter by language
swahili = dataset['train'].filter(lambda x: x['language'] == 'Swahili')
dholuo = dataset['train'].filter(lambda x: x['language'] == 'Dholuo')

print(f"Swahili: {len(swahili)}, Dholuo: {len(dholuo)}")
```

---

## Genres

Culture, News, Creative_writing, Exam, Agriculture, Commerce, Religion, Song, Health, Story, and more.

---

## Data Collection

Primary data was collected from respective language communities, including indigenous stories and narratives from student compositions, native language media stations, and publishers.

## Dataset Curators

**Kiswahili:** Rose Felynix, Khalid Kitito, Dr. Benard Okal
**Dholuo:** Jotham Ondu Ajiki, Dr. Jackline Okello, Jonathan Muga, Mercy Lavinca Oduoll
**Luhya (Logooli):** Salano Odari, Dr. Phillip Lumwamu
**Luhya (Bukusu):** Mactilda Nekesa Makana, Mulwale Martin
**Luhya (Marachi):** Yonah Weunda

---

## Citation

```bibtex
@article{wanjawa2022kencorpus,
  title={Kencorpus: A Kenyan Language Corpus of Swahili, Dholuo and Luhya for Natural Language Processing Tasks},
  author={Wanjawa, Barack W. and Wanzare, Lilian D. and Indede, Florence and McOnyango, Owen and Ombui, Edward and Muchemi, Lawrence},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.12081},
  year={2022}
}
```

---

## Links

- **Research Paper**: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.12081
- **Dataverse**: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/KLCKL5

## License

**CC-BY-4.0**

## Acknowledgments

Part of the **Kencorpus** project for low-resource Kenyan language NLP resources.