Amina Bello
Founder & Executive Director
Sets the vision and strategy for Waraka, growing it from a community project into the African Data Lab.
WARAKA — THE AFRICAN DATA LAB
Meet the leadership
The founders and leads guiding Waraka's mission: open datasets for African languages and contexts, built by the community.
Kwame Mensah
Co-Founder & Research Director
Leads the research agenda across text, speech, and vision, and mentors fellows to publication.
Zainab Yusuf
Head of Data & Annotation
Owns dataset quality end to end — annotation guidelines, workforce training, and release standards.
Thabo Ndlovu
Head of Engineering
Builds and maintains AfriAnnotate, AfriFinder, and the infrastructure behind every Waraka release.
Fatoumata Diallo
Head of Community
Grows and supports the contributor community across languages, countries, and time zones.
Samuel Tesfaye
Fellowship Program Lead
Runs the AfriNLP Fellowship, pairing emerging researchers with mentors from idea to publication.
Ngozi Okafor
Partnerships & Funding Lead
Builds relationships with universities, labs, and funders to sustain open African data work.
Yasmin Abdi
Operations Lead
Keeps the lab running — programs, logistics, and governance across all Waraka initiatives.