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Release Date: 9/17/2026
Format: MP3
Size: 20.89 GB
A collection of read speech recordings in Swahili (Kiswahili).
Restrictions/Special Constraints
None provided.
Forbidden Usage
It is forbidden to attempt to determine the identity of speakers in the Common Voice datasets. It is forbidden to re-host or re-share this dataset.
Intended Use
This dataset is intended to be used for training and evaluating automatic speech recognition (ASR) models. It may also be used for applications relating to computer-aided language learning (CALL) and language or heritage revitalisation.
sw)This datasheet is for cv-corpus-27.0-2026-09-11 of the Mozilla Common Voice Scripted Speech dataset for Swahili [Kiswahili - sw]. The dataset contains 730758 clips representing 1064.9 hours of recorded speech (392.2 hours validated) from 1525 speakers, recorded from a text corpus of 140,489 sentences.
| Code | Variant | Clips | Speakers |
|---|---|---|---|
| sw-baratz | Kiswahili cha Bara ya Tanzania | 22,702 (3.1%) | 25 (1.6%) |
| sw-sanifu | Kiswahili Sanifu (EA) | 21,843 (3.0%) | 70 (4.6%) |
| sw-barake | Kiswahili cha Bara ya Kenya | 6,487 (0.9%) | 59 (3.9%) |
| sw-kingwana | Kingwana (DRC) | 1,756 (0.2%) | 34 (2.2%) |
| sw-kimvita | Kimvita (KE) - Central dialect | 15 (0.0%) | 2 (0.1%) |
| sw-katanga | Katanga (DRC) | 5 (0.0%) | 1 (0.1%) |
| sw-kimrima | Kimrima (TZ) - Northern dialect | 5 (0.0%) | 1 (0.1%) |
| Code | Accent | Clips | Speakers |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | 8,022 (1.1%) | 50 (3.3%) |
The dataset includes the following self-declared age and gender distributions. A coverage summary is shown below each table.
Self-declared gender information. The table shows clip and speaker counts with percentages. Speakers who did not declare a gender are listed as Unspecified. A dash (-) indicates zero.
| Code | Gender | Clips | Speakers |
|---|---|---|---|
| male_masculine | Male, masculine | 249,205 (34.1%) | 399 (26.2%) |
| female_feminine | Female, feminine | 268,190 (36.7%) | 400 (26.2%) |
| transgender | Transgender | - | - |
| non-binary | Non-binary | - | - |
| do_not_wish_to_say | Prefer not to say | - | - |
| - | Unspecified | 213,363 (29.2%) | 947 (62.1%) |
Gender declared: 517,395 of 730,758 clips (70.8%), 578 of 1,525 speakers (37.9%)
Self-declared age information. The table shows clip and speaker counts with percentages. Speakers who did not declare an age are listed as Unspecified. A dash (-) indicates zero.
| Code | Age | Clips | Speakers |
|---|---|---|---|
| teens | Teens | 3,843 (0.5%) | 25 (1.6%) |
| twenties | Twenties | 364,425 (49.9%) | 706 (46.3%) |
| thirties | Thirties | 79,828 (10.9%) | 79 (5.2%) |
| fourties | Fourties | 25,305 (3.5%) | 15 (1.0%) |
| fifties | Fifties | 30,175 (4.1%) | 7 (0.5%) |
| sixties | Sixties | 4,444 (0.6%) | 3 (0.2%) |
| seventies | Seventies | - | - |
| eighties | Eighties | - | - |
| nineties | Nineties | - | - |
| - | Unspecified | 222,738 (30.5%) | 927 (60.8%) |
Age declared: 508,020 of 730,758 clips (69.5%), 598 of 1,525 speakers (39.2%)
Clip buckets
| Bucket | Clips |
|---|---|
| Validated | 269,140 (36.8%) |
| Invalidated | 80,839 (11.1%) |
| Other | 380,779 (52.1%) |
Training splits
| Split | Clips |
|---|---|
| Train | 46,733 (17.4%) |
| Dev | 12,271 (4.6%) |
| Test | 12,271 (4.6%) |
Training split coverage: 71,275 of 269,140 validated clips (26.5%)
The dataset contains 269140 validated, 80839 invalidated, and 380779 unresolved clips. The average clip duration is 5.246 seconds.
Validated sentences: 134,729
| Category | Count |
|---|---|
| Unvalidated sentences | 5,760 |
| Pending sentences | 5,730 |
| Rejected sentences | 30 |
| Reported sentences | 1,899 |
The corpus contains 140,489 sentences: 134,729 validated and 5,760 unvalidated (5,730 pending review, 30 rejected), with 1,899 reported for review.
There follows a randomly selected sample of five sentences from the corpus.
Tanzania ni moja kati ya nchi zinazosifika duniani kwa kulinda maadili yake
Hupatikana upande wa mashariki ya eneo
Mfano wa alama za ushuruti hizo; ki, ka, nge, ngeli, ngali, ikiwa, kama, n
wabena wengi wanalinda imani zao kwa kiasi kikubwa
"Mkono wako na uwe juu yangu, na juu ya nyumba ya baba yangu""!"
| Source | Sentences |
|---|---|
| batch-2-07-02-2022 | 39,636 (29.4%) |
| Kiswahili MCV writing competition | 31,752 (23.6%) |
| batch-1-19-11-2021-contributors-set | 28,589 (21.2%) |
| wiki | 8,833 (6.6%) |
| batch-4-08-02-2023-contributors-set | 8,822 (6.5%) |
| batch-2-10-03-2023-agriculture-set | 4,570 (3.4%) |
| batch-3-17-08-2022-contributors-set | 4,350 (3.2%) |
| batch-2-11-07-2022-contributors-set | 2,305 (1.7%) |
| batch-1-16-02-2023-badili-livestock-diseases-set | 1,627 (1.2%) |
| Other | 4,245 (3.2%) |
Each row of a tsv file represents a single audio clip, and contains the following information:
client_id - hashed UUID of a given user
path - relative path of the audio file
sentence - the sentence to be read aloud
sentence_id - unique identifier for the sentence
sentence_domain - domain classification(s) of the sentence
up_votes - number of people who said audio matches the text
down_votes - number of people who said audio does not match text
age - age of the speaker1
gender - gender of the speaker1
accents - accents of the speaker1
variant - variant of the language1
locale - locale code of the language
segment - if sentence belongs to a custom dataset segment, it will be listed here
validated_sentences.tsvThe validated_sentences.tsv file contains one row per validated sentence in the text corpus:
sentence_id - unique identifier for the sentence
sentence - the sentence text
variant - the variant of the language
sentence_domain - the domain(s) the sentence belongs to
source - the source the sentence was collected from
is_used - whether the sentence is still in circulation for recording
clips_count - number of clips recorded for this sentence
unvalidated_sentences.tsvThe unvalidated_sentences.tsv file contains one row per unvalidated sentence in the text corpus:
sentence_id - unique identifier for the sentence
sentence - the sentence text
variant - the variant of the language
sentence_domain - the domain(s) the sentence belongs to
source - the source the sentence was collected from
up_votes - number of upvotes the sentence received
down_votes - number of downvotes the sentence received
status - current status of the sentence (pending or rejected)
This dataset is released under the Creative Commons Zero (CC-0) licence. By downloading this data you agree to not determine the identity of speakers in the dataset.
For a full list of age, gender, and accent options, see the demographics spec. These will only be reported if the speaker opted in to provide that information. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4