Teknobyte Limited

Teknobyte Limited (www.teknobyte.ltd) is an East African-based technology company that develops and provides Engineering and ICT solutions in various sectors within the greater region. Teknobyte was founded in 1994 and operated as a business until 2002 when it was incorporated as a limited liability company.

Innovations on Spoken Language Technologies

Teknobyte Limited has been researching Spoken Language Technologies since 2004 when we developed the first Text to Speech Systems (TTS) in local languages: the Kiswahili TTS and the Kenyan English TTS.

NAFIS- A product from SLT Research

We subsequently applied these products to the development of NAFIS – the National Farmers Information Service, an innovative and comprehensive farmers’ information service launched in April 2008. NAFIS integrated the internet and speech technologies systems to realize a flexible, readily updated voice and an interactive web service for agricultural extension.

Building the Kenyan English and Kiswahili Language features

To develop the Kenyan English TTS, we defined and authenticated the language features and built them into a 60,000-word pronunciation dictionary. We then improved the intonation features of the Kiswahili TTS by incorporating questions into the system, among others.

The Kenyan Languages Lexicon

The Kenyan Languages Lexicon Project is building on this work to bring these innovations for use by the large public.