Gap Analysis of Annotation Tools for AfricaNLP

A study of 59 annotation tools against the needs of AfricaNLP researchers, prepared by HausaNLP (Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria) and EthioNLP (Bahir Dar University ICT4D, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia) and submitted to the Masakhane African Languages Hub under the Annotation and Playbook Grant in July 2026.

The report combines community surveys of what African-language practitioners struggle with, an audit of the tool landscape against 14 African-language criteria, and a review of what published African-language datasets actually used. It closes with the build requirements AfriAnnotate was designed to meet: offline and mobile annotation, African scripts and keyboards, speech recording and multimodal work, quality management, consent, licensing and governance, and team management.

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