Idris Akinade

Idris Olasunkanmi Akinade is a first class graduate of Linguistics from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. He also holds a Nigerian Certificate in Education (NCE) in English and Yorùbá Language from Federal College of Education Abeokuta, where he was awarded the best graduating student in Yoruba. Idris has been teaching Yorùbá and English language classes at the Secondary level since he graduated from college in 2015. During his compulsory National Youth Service in 2021, Idris was posted to Federal College of Education (TECH) Omoku, in Rivers state Nigeria, where hecontinued teaching English language.

Idris has a passion for teaching language to both humans and machines. In lieu of this, he works as a freelance translator with Masakhane Community to develop corpora for machine learning and translation. Masakhane community is a grassroots organization whose mission is to strengthen and spur Natural language processing (NLP) research in African languages, for Africans, by Africans. Idris also volunteers as a language instructor and language speaking partner at the Yoruba Language Center, University of Ibadan, where he teaches students of all language backgrounds Yoruba Language, physically and virtually.

His long term goal is to create linguistic tools that will aid learners of Yoruba language to learn independently from all corners of the world, in their own timing.