Real-time and async Swahili speech-to-text API that keeps up with how people actually talk. Handles regional accents, fast speech, and code-switching mid-sentence. Live in production in under a day.
90M+
Swahili is a national language of Kenya and Tanzania, a working language of the African Union, and a lingua franca across East and Central Africa. Most of its speakers learned it as a second language, which makes it the shared language of trade across the region.
Supporting Swahili lets you serve customers from Nairobi and Dar es Salaam to Kampala and eastern DRC, reaching several East African Community markets with one language.
People rarely stick to one language. Gladia follows Swahili speakers when they switch mid-sentence, so your transcripts stay clean.
Code-switchingUse cases
Whatever you're building, Swahili shouldn't be the thing that slows it down.
Kenyan offices run meetings in a mix of Swahili and English, often slipping into Sheng, so notes need to keep both languages in one transcript.
Meeting assistants →Safaricom reports 37.1 million active customers in Kenya, and mobile money support lines take Swahili calls at volumes QA teams can't review by hand.
CCaaS →With 65.7 million mobile money accounts in Tanzania, voice agents can guide phone-first users through payments and account questions in Swahili.
Voice agents →Swahili speakers are spread across more than 14 countries, so one Swahili subtitle track can carry content across East and Central Africa.
Media →Supported languages
Being multilingual has been our priority since day one. Gladia supports 100 languages, with code-switching and automatic language detection integrated into all models by default.
Ship Swahili voice features with an API built for messy, real-world conversations.
