Boston, USA, December 12, 2025 — Phrase, a global leader in AI-powered language technology, today announced a new partnership with African Languages Lab (All Lab), a pioneering language solutions company focused on building high-performing AI for African languages to make technology and markets more accessible. The partnership integrates All Lab’s Mansa engine into Phrase Language AI, Phrase’s AI-powered translation capability, through the newly launched Bring Your Own Engine (BYOE) capability. This gives customers quick access to specialized African languages directly within the Phrase Platform.
Across Africa’s 2,000+ languages, more than 95% remain underrepresented in mainstream AI models. All Lab is working to close that gap by developing machine translation, small language models (SLMs), and curated datasets designed for high-quality communication at scale. Through BYOE, Phrase customers can now integrate Mansa, All Lab’s flagship engine for 30 African languages, which is designed to deliver accurate, culturally-aware contextual translation at scale. The integration expands multilingual reach for organizations operating across African markets, as well as global brands growing their presence on the continent.
“For all the talk about global AI progress, African languages are still treated as peripheral, a serious misalignment with the realities of one of the fastest-growing and most economically significant regions in the world,” said Sheriff Issaka, Founder and Head of Research at African Languages Lab. “We chose to partner with Phrase because its BYOE offers a straightforward, scalable way to deploy Mansa where it’s needed. We are excited to be part of Phrase’s customer and partner ecosystem that is open by design and allows customers to access the best technologies for their specific needs. This collaboration drastically reduces adoption friction and enables both African and global organizations to engage more substantively with African audiences. This is a meaningful step toward lowering barriers for everyone.”
The integration was sparked by initial conversations at LocWorld, where the African Languages Lab won the Process Innovation Challenge. Mansa is among the first solutions available through the BYOE framework, reflecting Phrase’s commitment to an open ecosystem that connects customers with best-of-breed AI and partner technologies.
“Building an open ecosystem is central to our strategy at Phrase. With BYOE, we are making it easy for customers and partners to bring specialized engines into the Phrase Platform so they can pair the right technology with each language, market, and use case,” said Edmund Ovington, VP, Global Partnerships & Ecosystem at Phrase. “It is a tangible step in how we build our ecosystem. Open by design, flexible in practice, and focused on connecting customers with best-of-breed technology. African Languages Lab is exactly the kind of partner this framework was created for. Its leadership in African languages expands language access, strengthens our partner network, and helps customers grow with confidence across Africa and beyond.”
The partnership supports two complementary goals. For African Languages Lab, Phrase provides a powerful channel to scale adoption of Mansa through BYOE. By making the engine available, it also increases language access and positions both companies to better serve organizations expanding into Africa, as well as African businesses scaling internationally.
About African Languages Lab (All Lab)
The All Lab is an AI research and technology leader dedicated to bridging the digital language divide for African languages by building high-quality data, models, and solutions that work at scale. We aim to remove the technical and commercial barriers that keep African languages off the digital map. By making enterprise-ready language AI straightforward to adopt, we help organisations communicate effectively across Africa’s linguistic diversity.
We combine rigorous field linguistics with industrial-scale data engineering and modern AI to design, build, and deploy production systems. Focusing on 30 African languages, we deliver machine translation, automatic speech recognition, and bespoke model-training.
By removing technical, commercial, and operational friction, we help organizations reach millions of speakers with accurate, culturally appropriate technology. We are the trusted partner for organisations that need to reach Africa’s linguistic audiences at scale. For more information, visit africanlanguageslab.com.
About Phrase
Phrase is a world leader in AI-led language technology, helping organizations open the door to global business by reaching more people, making deeper connections, and driving faster growth across languages and cultures.
The cloud-based Phrase Platform comes equipped with all the key capabilities a business needs to drive a multilingual content strategy, from AI-driven machine translation and world-leading translation management to software and multimedia localization, best-in-class workflow automation, quality evaluation, and analytics. The Phrase Platform is designed to connect, streamline and manage every possible translation task across the enterprise.
That’s why brands like Uber, Shopify, Volkswagen, leading LSPs and global SI partners, and thousands of others choose Phrase to help them form meaningful connections with millions of people to accelerate their global growth. For more information, visit phrase.com.
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MEDIA CONTACTPamela Ghosal
E: pr@phrase.com
T: +44 20 7150 6886