A physical AI presence for Africa
Shona · noun · the one you go to
AMAi is a live African learning platform. Teachers, learners and examiners use it today. We are giving it a body: a solar unit you walk up to and talk to, in your own language, with no smartphone, no data bundle and no account.
The name is the thesis
You call her Amai. It is a term of address, not a label: it marks respect, and it marks who you are allowed to bring a problem to. Mashiri's work on Shona address terms describes exactly this, that kinship terms carry social obligation, not just identity.
We named the platform AMAi before we understood how much work the name would do. A mother does not ask which school you attend, whether your fees are paid, or whether you own a phone. That is the product specification.
Pedzisai Mashiri, "Terms of Address in Shona: A Sociolinguistic Approach," Zambezia, 1999.
Why a body, and not another app
Every number below is the reason the phone-shaped version of AMAi stops at the edge of town.
Amai, with a body
The unit stands where people already gather: a clinic yard, a school gate, a growth-point market. It runs on the sun, caches its models locally, and syncs when a signal appears. It does not need to know who you are before it helps you.
Everything it says is produced by the same engine that already marks exams and runs seminars for real Zimbabwean teachers today. The body is new. The brain is in production.
Sixty seconds at the unit
No screen to unlock, no queue, no one to ask permission from. The ring is dim until someone is close.
Speech recognition runs on the unit itself. No bundle is consumed, and nothing has to be typed.
Voice first, because literacy cannot be assumed. The screen is a courtesy for anyone who prefers to read.
The same platform that marks exams picks up what the unit heard, so the interaction is not thrown away.
The engine is not a plan
This is the part most hardware pitches do not have. Teachers, learners and examiners use these surfaces today. The unit is a new front door onto a system that already works.
Learners upload papers; AI and human markers both score them, and results come back with a candidate number.
Facilitators run live sessions with enrolment, capacity and attendance built in.
Teachers set work, learners submit, and the platform tracks marking through to a grade.
An evaluation lab is running today. Production-quality recognition in both languages is what this raise funds.
Crowdfunding the first units
We are funding a specific, boring, checkable list: speech data collection, one hardware revision, and the first units in the ground.
An hour of recorded speech
Native Shona and Ndebele speakers, paid properly, recorded in the conditions the unit will actually face.
A day of the build
Enclosure, power budget, thermal work. The unmarketable engineering that decides whether it survives a year outdoors.
One unit, sited and named
A unit in a community you can name, with public reporting on what it was asked and whether it helped.
Before you give us anything