When people talk about artificial intelligence and language, the focus usually defaults to English, a handful of European languages and perhaps a few from Asia. African languages – thousands of them, often tonal, hyper-local and deeply contextual – rarely make the roadmap.

That blind spot is exactly where Nkenne is building a business and a developer platform, and arguably an economic on-ramp for an entire continent. Nkenne, founded by musician-turned-tech founder Michael Odokara-Okigbo, is an African language-learning app and AI translation platform designed to “build the infrastructure for African language learning and translation capacities.” In his words, the goal is to bring African languages “to the 21st century” through speech-to-text, text-to-speech and speech-to-speech translation that preserves tonal, dialectal and proverbial nuance.

That vision just got a meaningful boost from Zoom Communications Inc. Odokara-Okigbo was named among the Top 5 winners in Zoom’s inaugural Solopreneur 50 program, selected from more than 3,000 applicants, and earned $30,000 in no-strings-attached funding. For a solo founder with a hyper-lean team, that’s not prize money – it’s runway.

What the Zoom Solopreneur 50 represents

Zoom’s Solopreneur 50 is a recognition program that highlights one of the most interesting trends in this AI cycle: highly leveraged individual builders using cloud, AI and collaboration tools to do what once required a funded startup and a full team. The program highlights solo founders whose businesses demonstrate originality, performance and real-world impact. The Top 5 receive cash awards to accelerate their missions.

Odokara-Okigbo was candid about what it meant to be singled out from thousands of entrepreneurs: “I was surprised, because there are a lot of entrepreneurs out there, and we just try to put our best foot forward every day,” he said. For him, the win is as much about his team as about himself: “Everyone who has been along on this journey, it’s because of them that we’ve been able to achieve this award.”

The recognition also comes from a platform Nkenne relies on daily. The company runs its global operations on Zoom, using it for international meetings and leaning heavily on AI-generated meeting notes to track progress and stay aligned. Being honored by a tool the company already depends on adds a layer of validation.

From a postponed tour to AI infrastructure

Nkenne didn’t start as a big infrastructure play. It started as a personal gap in the market and a push from family. During the pandemic, Odokara-Okigbo’s music tour across Europe and Africa was postponed, leaving him back home with time and energy he didn’t want to waste.

He had long wanted to learn his native language, Igbo, spoken in southeastern Nigeria, but quickly discovered there were no real tools to help him do it at scale. “I didn’t find any resources that could allow me to,” he explained. His mother’s response was simple and decisive: If you can’t find the resource, build it. Nkenne, named after his mother, was born from that challenge.

What began as an effort “just for wanting to teach African languages” has since expanded into a dual-pronged product approach:

• A business-to-consumer African language learning app, which also has utility for business-to-business and even government users.
• An AI-powered African language translation platform focused on speech-to-text, text-to-speech, text-to-text and speech-to-speech.

Today, Nkenne supports 15 African languages, with ambitions to grow to hundreds over the next three to five years. That’s a tiny slice of the total addressable space: Odokara-Okigbo points out that Nigeria alone has more than 500 distinct languages, and there are thousands across the continent. The strategy is deliberate: “We’re doing one language at a time,” with the long-term dream of broad coverage.

Culture, code and product as art

Nkenne’s Michael Odokara-Okigbo

Odokara-Okigbo is not a typical AI founder. He is an accomplished singer-songwriter and AMA winner who describes himself as operating at the “intersection of culture and code.” That mindset shapes how Nkenne is built and where it differentiates itself.

“I find building tech as an artistic endeavor as well,” he said, emphasizing that for Nkenne, design is not a layer applied at the end – it’s core to the experience. He estimates that “how it feels to the customer” accounts for “90% of the battle,” citing Steve Jobs’ approach at Apple as an inspiration. For a language platform that aims to serve both a global diaspora and users in fast-growing African markets, a focus on emotional resonance and user experience is not cosmetic; it’s a growth strategy.

He also sees his dual background as bringing left-brain and right-brain strengths together. Music is intuitive and emotional; AI engineering is analytical. “There’s a creativity between those two that I enjoy utilizing,” he said, noting that he often combines them – including using AI tools to help produce his own tracks faster, without outsourcing the core creative work.

Why African languages are a hard but important AI problem

One reason Nkenne exists is that mainstream AI and translation providers have largely sidestepped African languages. “A lot of Western companies… have not put funds towards advancing African language capacities,” Odokara-Okigbo noted.

The technical challenge is significant. Many African languages are both tonal and “dialectally sensitive.” Small changes in tone can completely change meaning. The word “Nkenne” itself, in Igbo, has six meanings depending on how it is pronounced. That complexity undermines naïve translation approaches and requires models trained on the right data, tuned for tone, dialect and proverb-heavy usage, and evaluated in partnership with native speakers.

Nkenne’s translation platform is designed specifically for that environment. The goal is not just to translate, but to translate with trust – to build a standard that governments, telecommunications companies and enterprises can rely on when deploying services across diverse regions. As Odokara-Okigbo put it, the company wants to be “that infrastructural layer and provide that standard where languages on the continent will no longer be ignored and misrepresented.” Without trust in the translations, “systems do degrade.”

AI, solopreneurs and leverage

The Nkenne story also illustrates how AI is reshaping what a single founder can do. Odokara-Okigbo does not see AI as overhyped; he sees it as a force multiplier.

Tools such as Zoom’s AI features, along with other AI products, have enabled him to streamline operations, respond more quickly to customers, and stay connected with partners and team members across geographies – even as he shuttles between the U.S. and Nigeria. AI is not abstract; it is infrastructure that enables him to operate as a global tech company while remaining, fundamentally, a solo founder with a lean team.

This is the broader promise behind the “solopreneur” label Zoom is seeking to elevate: that one person — with no full-time staff, but equipped with the right mix of AI, collaboration tools, contractors and part-time collaborators — can build something with the reach and impact of a traditional startup.

Putting $30,000 to work

For a large vendor, $30,000 barely registers as a budget line. For Nkenne, it is catalytic capital. Odokara-Okigbo already has specific plans for the funds: Nkenne is in active discussions with telco providers across Africa that want to integrate Nkenne AI into their services. The prize money is being used to “expand to those services to provide more value to those customers” and to “be prepared” to serve telcos as full-fledged providers, not just a niche app.

This is a key inflection point for the company. Telcos are among the primary channels for digital services in many African markets, and becoming a trusted language and translation partner at that layer positions Nkenne as infrastructure, not just an app. The funds effectively help Nkenne scale from consumer learning into a broader B2B and business-to-government play faster than originally planned.

A B2C app with B2B and B2G ambitions

Economically, Nkenne sits at an interesting juncture. On one side is the language-learning app, aimed at individuals – both within Africa and across the diaspora – who want to learn and retain their languages. On the other is a translation platform that already has traction among institutions.

Odokara-Okigbo describes the translation business as “mainly a B2B entity,” with usage expanding into B2G. Nkenne already has a contract with Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency, a federal government agency, to deploy its translation capabilities. As AI-based language infrastructure becomes more critical to digital government and citizen services, that early foothold could be strategic.

He also sees Nkenne as a bridge in both directions: helping global businesses enter African markets and helping African businesses and governments reach Western markets, with language as the enabling layer.

Preservation, power and what’s next

A broader societal thread runs through Nkenne’s roadmap. Odokara-Okigbo rejects the notion that AI is inevitably a force of cultural erasure. He argues that tools like Nkenne can “help a lot of small cultures to elevate themselves” by preserving endangered languages – not only in Africa but also among Indigenous communities in Australia, the U.S. and parts of Europe.

Africa’s demographics add urgency. Nigeria alone has over 250 million people and one of the world’s fastest-growing youth populations. Smartphone penetration is rising, and many people carry more than one phone. Investment in African tech is increasing. In that environment, language is not just cultural – it’s economic power. AI translation and learning tools open new economic corridors and ensure that growth doesn’t come at the cost of linguistic diversity.

Looking ahead three to five years, Odokara-Okigbo is explicit about where he wants Nkenne to be:

• Supporting “hundreds of languages” across both learning and translation.
• Offering robust text-to-text, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and speech-to-speech for African languages.
• Deepening penetration in government and enterprise as the de facto standard for African language translation.
• Ensuring African languages are “no longer ignored and misrepresented” in digital systems.

On a lighter note, he even has a target for where Nkenne’s work might show up: When asked when Zoom’s real-time captions should seamlessly translate into all African languages, he shoots for 2028.

For other would-be solopreneurs, his advice is grounded in lived experience as an artist who has had to develop a thick skin: “Let no be your guide. Accept no. No is good as it allows you to go where you need to go.” In this framing, rejection is not a verdict; it is a routing logic.

For Zoom, the Solopreneur 50 showcases what happens when AI and collaboration tools meet conviction and cultural purpose. For Nkenne, it is a validation milestone on a much longer journey to turn a mother’s challenge – “if you can’t find it, build it” – into the language infrastructure of a continent.

Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE. 

Image and photo: Nkenne