PRESS RELEASE

Cotonou, June 24, 2025

Benin Hosts the Regional Innovation and Digital Technology Lab with a AI Project in
Fon Language

The Institute for Inclusive Digital Africa (IIDIA) and the Agency for Information Systems
and Digital Technology (ASIN) officially launch today in Cotonou the Regional
Innovation and Digital Technology Lab, with an inaugural and unprecedented
project: the development of the first voice-to-voice artificial intelligence model in
the Fon language.

Conceived as a major step toward digital sovereignty, this innovation addresses a
critical obstacle to inclusion: the language barrier. In West Africa, where over 1,000
languages coexist, digital services primarily cater to French- or English-speaking
populations. The Fon language, spoken by millions in Benin and neighboring
countries, has largely been left out of the digital revolution—until now.

This voice AI model will finally allow millions of people—particularly the elderly and
rural communities—to interact with technology in their native language, without
relying on written literacy or foreign languages.

“This project is a model for adapting AI to Africa’s linguistic diversity,” said
Ambassador Makarimi Adechoubou, Chairman of the Board of IIDIA. “We are
building more than a tool: we are laying the foundation for a multilingual, inclusive
African public digital infrastructure, deeply rooted in the continent’s realities, giving a
digital voice to millions of Africans in their mother tongues.”

Three Priority Use Cases:

Locating on-call pharmacies

Checking Mobile Money account balance (in partnership with Celtis)

Accessing procedures to obtain a birth certificate, through simplified voice
based interactions

“This is not just about technology—it is about dignity,” emphasized Marc André Loko,
Director General of ASIN. “Africa’s digital future cannot be built without its
languages, its voices, and its realities. When a grandmother in a village can ask for
her bank balance in Fon and receive an immediate answer—that’s real inclusion.”

A functional prototype will be delivered within 9 months, using community-based
voice data collection and training on high-performance GPUs (NVIDIA A100/H100).

But the Fon AI project is only the beginning. The ambition is to extend this model to
other African languages and strategic sectors such as smart agriculture, digital
health, geolocation and mobility, digitized public services, and local-language
education.

The regional lab, supported by the Gates Foundation and co-led by the digital
ministries of Benin, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire, is a bold instrument for Africa’s digital
sovereignty. It promotes the development of digital public goods based on South
South cooperation, open innovation, and technological independence.

The Lab now invites technology partners, academia, investors, and policymakers to
join this mission. The next phase in Benin will expand the model to other local
languages and prepare for nationwide deployment.

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