Kora Lab is Africa's sovereign AI research and product lab. We build African language models, open datasets, and accessibility tools so the continent owns the AI systems that will define its future.
What is Kora Lab
Kora Lab is Africa's sovereign AI lab, headquartered in Lome, Togo. We build the African language models, open datasets, and accessibility tools that the African Union Continental AI Strategy, the Kigali Declaration, and the $60 billion Africa AI Fund assume already exist.
Our Mission
Mission One
Kora develops frontier AI systems that match or exceed international standards. Not simply to participate in AI, but to master it. Sovereign capabilities across research, datasets, training pipelines, foundation models, evaluation, and deployment infrastructure. Success is when African organizations choose Kora because it is among the world's best, not because it is African.
Mission Two
Building world-class AI is insufficient. Those capabilities must become usable by everyone. Kora removes barriers of language, literacy, education, affordability, digital complexity, and infrastructure limitations. Every African should benefit from frontier intelligence, regardless of English proficiency, literacy level, or technical background.
Performance and accessibility are inseparable. Every major initiative must strengthen at least one dimension, ideally both.
The Problem
Frontier AI tools are built for Western users. African end users face language, UX, and affordability barriers that make these tools impractical in their context.
All large-scale AI models and infrastructure are owned by non-African entities. Africa has no seat at the table in shaping the models that will define its future.
Governments have signed declarations. Billions are pledged. The AU Continental AI Strategy is live. What is missing is a technical lab capable of executing the vision at ground level. That is what Kora Lab is.
The Moment
APRIL 2025
54 African nations sign the Africa Declaration on AI in Kigali. A $60 billion Africa AI Fund is announced.
FEBRUARY 2026
The African Union and Google sign a landmark AI sovereignty partnership. The AfDB and UNDP launch the AI 10 Billion Initiative.
2025-2026
Togo activates Digital Strategy 2025-2030. At least 15 African countries now have national AI roadmaps.
THE GAP
All of this political will and capital exists without a unified technical lab to execute it. Kora Lab is that lab.
"We are not competing with these institutions. We are completing them."
54
Nations that signed the Kigali AI Declaration
$60B
Africa AI Fund pledged
2,000+
African languages almost entirely absent from frontier AI training data
4%
Africa's current share of the global AI workforce
Frequently Asked
Kora Lab is Africa's sovereign AI research and product lab. Headquartered in Lome, Togo, it builds African language models, datasets, and accessibility tools so the continent owns the AI systems that will define its future.
Kora Lab was founded by Kheir Lissi, an AI and big data engineer from Togo. He also founded Edenvallie, an incubator for neurodivergent entrepreneurs.
Kora Lab is based in Lome, Togo, and operates across the African continent through institutional, academic, and government partnerships.
Sovereign AI means Africa owns the models, the training data, the compute infrastructure, and the research agenda that shape artificial intelligence on the continent. It is the difference between using AI built elsewhere and building AI that reflects African languages, contexts, and priorities.
The Kigali Declaration is the April 2025 continental agreement signed by 54 African nations that established a unified African position on artificial intelligence and announced the $60 billion Africa AI Fund. Kora Lab exists to execute the technical workstreams the declaration assumes.
Kora Lab is a research and product lab, not a venture-backed startup. Its mandate is continental and institutional. It is aligned with the African Union Continental AI Strategy, Smart Africa, the AfDB AI 10 Billion Initiative, and national digital strategies including Digital Togo 2025-2030.
The lab is building open datasets and language model coverage across the major African language families, starting with Swahili, Yoruba, Hausa, Amharic, Wolof, Twi, Zulu, and Lingala, and expanding from there.
Governments and institutions can reach the lab through the contact page for partnership discussions. Investors and accelerators can request the strategic briefing. Researchers and technical builders can apply to collaborate on datasets, models, or working papers.
Yes. The lab publishes working papers, analyses, datasets, and policy briefs openly on the research page so the work compounds across the African research community rather than sitting behind paywalls.
Frontier models are trained overwhelmingly on English, Mandarin, and a few European languages. Of more than two thousand African languages, almost none are represented at scale. Without an African lab, the continent inherits AI that does not speak its languages, does not understand its contexts, and that no African institution governs.
Latest Writing
Analysis
Tutorat IA, deepfakes, metiers de demain, competences que l'IA ne peut pas reproduire. Le premier guide pratique pour les parents africains, ecrit depuis Lome.
2026-05-20 · 8 min
Read Article →Analysis
Frontier models reflect the data, languages, and assumptions of the regions that built them. For Africa, sovereignty is not a luxury, it is infrastructure.
2026-04-12 · 7 min
Read Article →Institutional
Fifty four nations signed. Sixty billion dollars was pledged. A year later, the question is no longer about intent. It is about execution.
2026-04-02 · 6 min
Read Article →Research
A proposed evaluation suite for measuring frontier model performance across major African languages.
2026-03
An analysis translating the AU policy framework into concrete research and engineering priorities.
2026-02
Whether you are a government, an institution, an investor, or a technical builder who believes in this mission, we want to hear from you.
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