Speakers: 80M+ (50M native, 30M+ L2)
Geographic spread: Nigeria (Northern states), Niger, Ghana, Chad, Cameroon, diaspora
Trade language: West African lingua franca
Writing system: Latin (Boko) and Arabic (Ajami) scripts
Linguistic family: Afro-Asiatic (Chadic branch)
Cultural significance: Hausa literature, Nollywood (Kannywood), Islamic scholarship
Digital presence: Growing on social media, YouTube, Nigerian tech ecosystem

Target Applications

This dataset is designed for:

Hausa ASR systems - Speech recognition for 80M+ speakers
Voice assistants - Nigerian tech startups, mobile banking
TTS for Hausa - Text-to-speech with authentic Northern Nigerian pronunciation
Language learning apps - Pronunciation training for Hausa learners
Content moderation - Social media platforms operating in Nigeria/Niger
Transcription services - Kannywood (Hausa film industry), radio, podcasts
Banking & fintech - Voice-enabled banking in Northern Nigeria

Dataset Structure

hausa-speech/
└── data/
    ├── audio/              # 42 WAV files
    └── metadata.csv        # Speaker metadata & transcripts

Data Splits

Hausa (Nigeria)

Files: 42 recordings
Dialect: Primarily Kano Hausa (standard/prestige dialect)
Context: Natural spontaneous speech
Use case: General-purpose Hausa ASR, West African voice AI

Languages Sampled in This Dataset ✅

42 audio samples available for immediate download:

Hausa: 42 files (~25 minutes)

Full OTS Inventory Available 📊

This sample represents <0.16% of Silencio's complete Hausa speech inventory.

Hausa by Country:

Nigeria: 964 hours, 124,481 recordings
United States: 5 hours, 1,052 recordings
United States Minor Outlying Islands: 3 hours, 273 recordings
South Africa: 2 hours, 192 recordings
Algeria: 2 hours, 230 recordings
American Samoa: 1 hour, 142 recordings
Niger: 1 hour, 135 recordings
Uganda: 1 hour, 50 recordings
+ 10 more countries (diaspora communities)

Total: 981+ hours across 127,000+ recordings

Contact us for access: sofia@silencioai.com

Key Features

✅ Native speakers - Authentic Nigerian Hausa (Kano dialect)
✅ Natural speech - Real conversational Hausa, not scripted
✅ Standard dialect - Kano variant (prestige/most widely understood)
✅ Diverse topics - Daily life, opinions, business, culture
✅ High audio quality - 48 kHz WAV format
✅ Rich metadata - Gender, dialect, emotions, transcriptions in Latin script
✅ Ethical data collection - Consent-based, privacy-preserving

Use Cases

1. Hausa Speech Recognition

Build ASR systems for the 80M+ Hausa-speaking market in Nigeria, Niger, and West Africa.

2. Voice Banking & Fintech

Power voice-enabled mobile banking in Northern Nigeria (Kano, Kaduna, Katsina).

3. Hausa TTS

Train text-to-speech models with authentic Kano/Northern Nigerian Hausa pronunciation.

4. Content Moderation

Build speech detection for Nigerian social media platforms and Kannywood content.

5. Kannywood & Media

Improve automatic transcription for Hausa films, radio, podcasts (Kannywood is a major industry).

6. Voice Assistants

Develop Hausa-language voice assistants for Northern Nigeria's growing smartphone market.

Loading the Dataset

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load full Hausa dataset
dataset = load_dataset("SilencioNetwork/hausa-speech")

# Access samples
for sample in dataset['train']:
    audio = sample['audio']
    transcript = sample['transcript']
    dialect = sample['dialect']
    print(f"Transcript: {transcript}")
    print(f"Dialect: {dialect}")

Sample Metadata

Each recording includes:

file_name: Audio file path
id: Unique recording ID
gender: Speaker gender
location: Speaker location
mother_tongue: Native language (Hausa)
dialect: Regional variant (Nigeria - Kano)
duration: Recording length (seconds)
emotions: Emotion labels (happy, tired, relaxed, etc.)
language: Hausa
type_of_script: free_speech (spontaneous, unscripted)
transcript: Whisper-generated transcription (Latin/Boko script)
script: Original prompt (question asked in Hausa)

Hausa Speech Characteristics

This dataset captures authentic Hausa speech features:

Tonal language: 2-3 tone system (high, low, falling)
Ejective consonants: ƙ, ɓ, ɗ (unique to Hausa)
Vowel length distinction: Short vs long vowels change meaning
Arabic loanwords: Rich Islamic vocabulary
Code-switching: Natural mixing with English (Nigeria), French (Niger)
Natural prosody: Authentic rhythm, stress, intonation
Real-world audio: Mobile recordings, natural environments

Market Context

West African Tech & Economy

80M+ Hausa speakers - One of Africa's top 5 languages
Northern Nigeria: 100M+ population, major economic zone
Kano: 4M population, commercial capital of Northern Nigeria
Smartphone penetration: Growing 20%+ annually in Northern Nigeria
Kannywood: Billion-dollar Hausa film industry (rival to Nollywood)
BBC Hausa: Major news service reaching millions
Islamic scholarship: Rich tradition of Hausa-language education

Why Hausa Matters

Underrepresented in AI: <0.1% of speech datasets despite 80M+ speakers
Trade language: West African lingua franca (Nigeria, Niger, Ghana, Chad)
Large market: Northern Nigeria's economy larger than many African countries
Cultural influence: Hausa music, literature, film reaching across West Africa
Growing digital economy: E-commerce, fintech, edtech emerging in Kano/Kaduna

Hausa Dialects

Kano Hausa (represented in this dataset) is the prestige dialect:

Most widely understood across Hausa-speaking regions
Used in media (BBC Hausa, VOA Hausa, Radio France International)
Taught in schools
Standard for written Hausa

Other major dialects: Sokoto, Katsina, Zaria (all mutually intelligible)

Ethical Considerations

All data was collected with explicit informed consent from native Hausa speakers. Recordings contain general conversational topics only - no sensitive personal information.

Comparison to Other Datasets

Dataset	Language	Hours	Speakers	Natural?
LibriSpeech	English	1,000	2,484	❌ Read speech
Common Voice	Hausa	~10	Few	⚠️ Read sentences
Silencio Hausa	Hausa	981+	3,500+	✅ Spontaneous

This is the largest natural Hausa speech dataset available.

Citation

If you use this dataset in your research or commercial product, please cite:

@dataset{silencio_hausa_speech_2026,
  title={Hausa Speech Dataset},
  author={Silencio Network},
  year={2026},
  publisher={HuggingFace},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/SilencioNetwork/hausa-speech}
}

Related Datasets

African Languages Speech - 6 African languages (Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Amharic, Nigerian English)
Yoruba Speech - 50 Yoruba samples (fellow Nigerian language)
Complete Voice AI Speech Dataset - 39 language/accent variants
Indian Languages Speech - 9 Indian languages

License

CC BY-NC 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International)

✅ Free for research and non-commercial use
❌ Commercial use requires licensing (contact us)

About Silencio

Silencio is a voice AI data sourcing company with 2M+ contributors across 180+ countries. We provide scaled sourcing of real-world audio and speech data for AI labs, robotics companies, and enterprises building voice AI products.

🌐 silencioai.com
📧 sofia@silencioai.com

Tags: hausa, hausa language, nigerian languages, west africa, nigeria, niger, kano, kannywood, african languages, low-resource languages, speech recognition, asr, tts, voice ai, natural speech, spontaneous speech, nigerian speech, chadic languages

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