I always want to do something that affects my people – Dr Paul Azunre explains the motivation behind Khaya App
Loaded with a desire to do things that affect his people; to change their lives and impact them positively, Dr Paul Azunre, a Ghanaian Computer Scientist and 2002 National Science and Maths champion with Opoku Ware School explain what inspired him to start Algorine and why he opted to set up a branch in Ghana.
Speaking to Miss Salomey Dosu on the Big Discussion on the Active Morning Show on Friday, May 27, 2022, Dr Azunre who is known in showbiz as Dr Pushkin said after he got the education and experience he decided to do something he is passionate about and that informed his decision to pursue what he is currently doing.
“I’ve always been kind of good at maths and engineering in general. I like playing with things and making new kind of things with my hands and I got a computer and I learnt how to code and that opened a new environment for me. And I have always been looking for I guess, something that affects my people or something that affects my community,” he explains was informed of his decision to pursue Algorine and Ghana NLP as against things like quantum physics which would not have a bigger impact on his people and community.
Speaking on Algorine, Dr Azunre said he started Algorine after his PhD and realized the academia wasn’t suited for him and he ventured into entrepreneurship by turning a solar energy innovation which was his PhD work into a company. His dream was to use it to make solar panels more efficient but due to the cost involved in procuring machines, he decided to switch to software engineering, a field he is more inclined to. So he at a point decided to change the solar energy to translation, a thing that brought about Ghana NLP and Khaya.
On why he opted to have a branch of Algorine in Ghana, he stated that it was because he wanted a way to make his work relevant to Ghana.
“…as I said, I was looking for ways to make my work relevant to Ghana” and though he knew it is hard to have a branch here, he was looking for “ways to apply technology to our problems and this is where the translation[Ghana NLP, Khaya] issue came out of”. He noted that at the time they[Ghana NLP] started working on local language translation, there was no Google translate for Twi, Ewe and others.
Currently, Khaya offers translations in five languages including Twi, Ewe, Ga, Dagbani and Yoruba. The application is available on Google Playstore and the Appstore for Android and iOS users as well as on the Ghana NLP website as a web application.
At the time of filing this report, Khaya has over 10k downloads on Google Playstore with positive reviews.
