Hausa NLP Corpus Development

Context

A technology team working on an NLP project needed a large, accurate Hausa text corpus to improve language models and support digital tools for Hausa speakers. They had limited access to high-quality, diverse Hausa materials and needed someone who understood both the language and the research process.

Challenge

Reliable Hausa data is often locked in physical formats—academic projects, novels, newspapers, and community publications that are not digitized. The team needed clean, searchable text, but much of the available material was scattered, fragile, or difficult to access.

My Approach

I served as the Hausa content lead and built the corpus from the ground up. This involved:

• locating relevant Hausa texts across academic, literary, and cultural sources
• scanning and digitizing physical manuscripts, projects, and novels
• converting the scanned materials into structured e-copies suitable for analysis
• performing quality checks to remove errors, duplicates, or distortions
• preserving linguistic features unique to Hausa while preparing the data for NLP use

When I encountered barriers accessing physical materials, I shifted to a more systematic workflow using scanners and controlled documentation to protect the integrity of the texts.

Outcome

The team received a high-quality, diverse Hausa corpus that could be used for training, testing, and analysis. The dataset improved coverage across dialects, writing styles, and domains—strengthening the accuracy of their language models.

What This Demonstrates

• ability to lead and structure Hausa language data projects
• experience bridging linguistic knowledge with technical workflows
• strong research skills in sourcing, digitizing, and cleaning rare language materials
• reliability in handling sensitive or hard-to-find content