Sahara CodeSwitch Africa Challenge 2026 ($10,000 USD prize pool) – YOA

Deadline: September 15, 2026

Applications are open for the Sahara CodeSwitch Africa Challenge 2026. The Challenge invites builders, startups, researchers, product groups, and builders throughout Africa to assist resolve one of many largest unsolved issues in voice AI. Use Sahara’s new code-switching APIs. Build actual purposes. Benchmark what works. Help floor how properly present speech fashions deal with code-switched audio in actual-world settings.

The Challenge Task: Create or enhance an actual-world voice AI application

The transcript acquired can be utilized to carry out a downstream process. Examples embrace a voice assistant that completes a reserving, a voice-pushed triage device, a spoken-language kind-filler, or a voice interface that takes an motion on a consumer’s behalf.

Categories

Five tracks designed for actual-world impression throughout Africa.

• Health: Clinical documentation, affected person consumption, neighborhood well being, maternal well being, public well being, hospital workflows, and frontline care.
• Legal & Public Services: Court transcription, authorized assist, citizen companies, civic reporting, complaints, justice entry, and public-sector workflows.
• Fintech, Telco & Customer Experience: Voice banking, KYC, funds, collections, buyer help, name facilities, agent help, and buyer insights.
• Agriculture & Education: Farmer advisory, extension companies, tutoring, classroom studying, native-language schooling, and abilities coaching.
• Other High-Impact Use Cases: Humanitarian response, accessibility, media, spiritual companies, commerce, transport, tradition, and any significant use of code-switching voice AI.

Prizes

• $10,000 Total Cash Prize Pool: Cash prizes can be awarded to prime-performing options throughout the problem classes.

Top Teams can even obtain:

• Partner Demo Day: Access for prime groups
• Greater Visibility: With sponsors, judges, funders and ecosystem companions
• Pilot Opportunities: Potential pilot or deployment conversations
• Sahara API Credits: Additional sources to proceed constructing
• Recognition: Across Intron and accomplice channels

Eligibility

• Open to builders throughout Africa and the diaspora. Apply as a solo builder or as a crew.
• They particularly encourage:
  • Developers & engineers
  • AI/ML researchers
  • Startups & product groups
  • Student groups
  • Open-source builders
  • NGOs & civic-tech groups
  • Companies with voice or buyer-dealing with workflows

Application

Each submission should:

• Use voice to realize a downstream process (the agentic part), not merely convert speech to textual content.
• Benchmark efficiency on code-switched audio enter throughout at the very least three speech fashions, together with an Intron Sahara API, and at the very least two different fashions of the crew’s alternative (world, native, open-supply, industrial, pretrained or tremendous-tuned).
• Target a selected vertical or use case (see classes beneath).
• Where attainable and permitted, submit code-switched audio samples used for testing, with fundamental metadata (language pair, area, accent/nation, system sort, noise circumstances).

Click here to apply

For extra info, go to Sahara CodeSwitch Africa Challenge.