SanKam is an AI-powered speech-to-speech platform that helps people and businesses who speak different African languages communicate, negotiate and trade across borders.
Africa is already moving.
Connecting and trading, market to market, border to border.
SanKam is building the language layer that helps those connections happen across borders.
SanKam lets the trade flow.
£165B+
in intra-African trade, with the potential to go much further.
SanKam helps remove language barriers so more businesses can connect, negotiate and trade across borders.
Our vision is to help unlock Africa’s enormous untapped trade potential, enabling more people and businesses to participate in and benefit from trade within Africa and with the rest of the world.
Most cross-border deals are spoken, informal and full of market slang. Interpreters are out of reach for most traders, and general AI was never trained on how they talk.
5 to 12%
Source: Brenton and Isik, De-Fragmenting Africa, World Bank, 2012.
Naira dubu ashirin
… ?
Buhu uku
Deux ? Trois ?
Takardun kwastam?
Pardon ?
Za a biya gobe
Aujourd’hui ?
Four things lost in translation.
Each trader speaks in their own language and hears the other in theirs. SanKam is built for real-world trade, helping people communicate, negotiate and do business across language barriers even in low-connectivity environments.
English and Kiswahili
Live
Illustrative conversation
Choose a conversation
Trader A talks naturally, in their own language.
SanKam turns speech into text, interprets it, and speaks it back.
Trader B hears it straight away and answers in theirs.
Both traders confirm they have understood each other, then agree terms between themselves.
An illustrative conversation. It plays through three language pairs on a loop.
Marketplaces, mobile money, logistics and customs systems plug SanKam in, so every user can work in their own language.
We start with a product that solves a real problem on day one, and grow it into proprietary African language AI that others build on.
SanKamSpeech-to-speech AI, trade vocabulary, quality safeguardsEvery recording is consented to, anonymised at source, and used to benefit the communities who speak the language.
Clear consent in the speaker’s own language, and the right to withdraw it.
Personal details stripped at source. Records encrypted.
Confidence is shown, and anything that needs checking is flagged.
When SanKam is unsure, it says so and asks both traders to confirm the meaning before they agree.
Tested language by language, with native speakers reviewing the results.
Kiswahili to FrenchNeeds review
“Tutalipana baada ya mavuno.”
Payment terms include a regional expression.
Confidence61%
Both traders are asked to confirm before they agree.
From market stalls to border posts, clearer conversations mean fewer costly mistakes and more customers.
Prices, quantities, customs and payment, understood on both sides of the border.
Most informal cross-border trade is run by women. SanKam lets them sell to customers they could not talk to before.
Twelve languages in our launch plan, widely spoken and underserved alike. Each language pair is tested on its own and opens to traders once it meets our quality bar.
Twi Eʋegbe Yorùbá Hausa Kiswahili አማርኛ isiZulu isiXhosa العربية Français Português English
Understood by both tradersHausa and French
Each trader confirmed they understood
Illustrative. SanKam helps traders confirm they understand each other; it does not verify or validate the terms of a deal. Formal transaction verification is something we plan to develop later, as part of the wider trade platform.
Fewer misunderstandings mean lower risk and wider markets for informal traders. The same layer can open education and knowledge across languages.
We measure conversations completed, trader satisfaction, interpretation confidence, corrections and market reach.
The bigger vision
We start with traders and businesses at the border, and build towards Africa’s leading AI language technology company: connecting every African through seamless communication across indigenous languages.
Leads SanKam’s vision and strategy, driven by a passion for technology, African innovation and cross-border trade.
Qualified accountant and financial risk and treasury professional, with Head of Finance experience.
Leads SanKam’s technology, and is Director and CEO of the UK software house KawanJay Ltd.
Senior ERP consultant with more than ten years in finance and supply chain transformation.
Actuarial science graduate with more than ten years in insurance, catastrophe risk analysis and portfolio management.
Leads marketing strategy, brand positioning, market expansion and growth.
Leads SanKam’s approach to privacy, AI governance, data stewardship and responsible technology.
Advisory board Professor David Luke, Afzaal Mauthoor, Adija Kamara, Mary Koomson and Tomas Andrek.
Meet the full teamSanKam is an AI-powered speech-to-speech interpretation platform. Two people speak in their own languages, and each hears the other in theirs, so they can trade without a shared language.
People and businesses trading across different African languages: market and cross-border traders, buyers, cooperatives and small businesses.
Speak, interpret, hear and reply, trade. One trader speaks naturally, SanKam interprets the speech, and the other trader hears it in their own language and replies the same way.
Twelve at launch: English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Twi, Eʋegbe, Yorùbá, Kiswahili, Hausa, isiXhosa, Amharic and isiZulu, with more to follow.
Yes. SanKam is built for real-world markets and border crossings, including places where the connection is weak.
It is voice-first, built for African languages and the way trade really sounds: informal speech, mixed languages, local expressions and market terms. It is designed for live negotiation, not written text.
Through local market activation, partners, trader networks, financial institutions and pilots in our first African markets. The SanKam app is coming soon, and we will link to it here as soon as it is publicly available.
We work with organisations across the trade ecosystem on pilots and partnerships. Partner with us or contact us.
Partnerships are how SanKam reaches traders: through markets, trader networks, financial institutions and pilots across the ecosystem.
Partner with usFor general and investment enquiries, write to us and the right person will reply.
Contact us