Durban · South Africa · Est. 2026

The most transparent
African audio dataset
in the world.

Siqala is a community-owned data collective in Durban. Members earn immediate income contributing rare South African dialect recordings. Every payout is documented. Every voice is consented. Every rand is traceable.

🛡 100% Informed Consent · Paid Same Day · Data Rights Retained by Community

Become a member → Commission a dataset ↓

Live traction — Durban pilot

Pre-registered members

Recording hubs ready

Dialect types captured

Accepting founding member registrations now

Same day

Members paid on the day they record — no waiting

13x

Above the national minimum wage per session

80%

Of every dataset sale returns to the community

30 min

A typical session. Maximum 6 per month per member.

Why Siqala exists

Unemployment is a system failure — not a personal one.

The coloured community in KwaZulu-Natal has been left behind by formal employment for decades. The youth who grew up here are not lazy, not unskilled, and not without value. The system simply never built a door for them.

Siqala builds the door. Not charity — income. Not dependency — ownership. Every member is a stakeholder in what we build together.

65%

Youth unemployment in the coloured community — more than double the national average.

R30.23

National minimum wage per hour as of March 2026. Siqala pays more than 13 times this per session hour.

Cost to join Siqala. No investment. No equipment. No data contract. Just your voice and your time.

The process

Four steps. Thirty minutes. Paid today.

Simple enough to explain to anyone. Here is everything between walking in and walking out with money.

📍

Come to the hub

Visit Veronica's community centre. WiFi provided — no airtime used. Your phone charges while you work.

🎙

Do your session

Read a sentence. Describe a photo. Answer a question in your language. Guided, simple, done in under 30 minutes.

✅

Sign your release

Your Stakeholder Release Form confirms your consent and your right to 80% of all future revenue generated from your contribution.

💸

Get paid today

R200 via Instant Money SMS — same day. Cash out at PEP or Shoprite. Plus a top-up bonus when your dataset sells for more.

What members do

Everyday tasks. Real pay. Always work available.

Task types grow as demand grows. The pipeline never runs dry — AI training never stops and our community's value only compounds over time.

🎙

Voice recordings

Read sentences or tell short stories in your own language. Cape Malay Afrikaans and KZN coloured speech are absent from global AI — making yours the highest-value contribution.

Highest value

🖼

Photo descriptions

Look at a photo and describe what you see in your own language. AI models need millions of these to understand the world through African eyes.

Always available

📸

Photo contributions

Take photos of everyday life in Durban — street scenes, food, community spaces. African visual data is as sought-after as language data.

Easy to do

✍️

Text and translation

Which sentence sounds more natural? Translate a short phrase. Correct a sentence in Afrikaans or Zulu. Small tasks, fast to complete.

No equipment

💬

Sentiment labelling

Read a sentence and say whether it feels happy, sad, angry or neutral. Trains AI to understand human emotion in African languages.

Quick sessions

🌱

Growing always

As Siqala grows we add new task types. The community's value compounds — the rarer our corpus becomes, the higher it sells and the more members earn.

Expanding

What members earn

More than 13 times the minimum wage. Paid the same day.

We don't just beat the minimum wage. We make it look like what it is — a system that was never designed to give people enough. Siqala was.

National minimum wage (March 2026)

R30.23 / hour

The legal floor. Most in this community earn at or below this.

South African average hourly wage

R80–R182 / hour

Varies by industry. Often inaccessible without experience or qualifications.

Siqala session rate

R400 / hour equivalent

R200 for a 30-minute session. No qualifications. No experience. Just your voice.

How the earnings work

Per session — paid same day

R200

Every 30-minute session earns R200 via Standard Bank Instant Money. Paid on recording day — no waiting.

Monthly guaranteed floor

R1,200

6 sessions per month maximum — keeping sessions available for more community members while giving each person a reliable monthly income.

Top-up bonus when datasets sell

Variable +

When a dataset sells above the base price — especially for rare dialect premiums — the additional 80% share is distributed as a bonus to every member who contributed to that recording period.

Why we cap at 6 sessions per month: So more people can participate. We would rather 100 members earn R1,200 each than 10 members earn R12,000. The goal is community-wide impact — not individual maximisation.

How the money works

Three tiers. Fully transparent. Nothing hidden.

Every dataset sale has a base price agreed with the buyer. A Curation Fee covers forensic verification, peer-review transcription, and ethical sourcing management. Here is exactly where every rand goes.

Dataset pricing is available on request. Rare dialect datasets — particularly Cape Malay Afrikaans and KZN coloured dialect — are priced on scarcity, not market rate. Volume, dialect type, metadata depth, and exclusivity all affect the final price. Contact us to discuss your requirements.

80%

Community Payout

Of every base sale price — paid directly to contributing members. R200 per session on recording day. Bonus top-up distributed when datasets sell above base.

✓R200 paid same day via Instant Money
✓Top-up bonus on premium sales
✓This percentage never changes
✓Redeemable at PEP, Shoprite, any ATM

20%

Ubuntu Fund

Funds all hub operations and community giving. As Siqala grows and new hubs open, new hub captains are paid from here — never from the members' share.

✓Hub running costs and WiFi
✓Recording equipment
✓Hub captain payments as we scale
✓Food packs for women and children in need

+20%

Curation Fee → Founders

A markup on the base price — a separate line on the buyer invoice covering forensic verification, peer review, business development, and platform management.

✓Forensic-grade audio verification
✓US partnership development
✓Platform architecture and backend
✓On-the-ground Durban coordination

The community always receives 80% of the base price — paid before the dataset reaches market. New hubs, hub captains, and community giving are all funded from the Ubuntu Fund so the member share is never diluted. The Curation Fee is a separate line on the buyer invoice, not taken from the community's share.

For data partners

Commission the dataset before it exists.

We are currently accepting Founding Dataset Partners — organisations who want to commission exclusive rare dialect datasets directly from the Durban community. Your prepayment funds the collection and pays members on recording day.

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Exclusive commissioning

Define the dialect mix, task types, volume, and demographic split you need. We collect it exclusively for you. No catalogue — bespoke datasets built to your NLP requirements.

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Ethical sourcing story

Your prepayment puts money in community members' hands on recording day. That's a supply chain story your stakeholders can be proud of — 100% consent, 80% community payout, fully documented.

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De-risked supply chain

51+ registered members ready to record. Hub infrastructure in place. Consent framework signed. Technical specs to studio standard. You know exactly what's coming before you commission.

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Unmatched scarcity

Cape Malay Afrikaans. KZN coloured dialect. Durban township isiZulu. Spontaneous trilingual code-switching. None of these exist in any training dataset anywhere in the world. Until now.

Pricing available on request — rare dialects are priced on scarcity, not market rate.

Contact our partnerships team to discuss volume, dialect mix, exclusivity terms, and prepayment structure. Founding partners receive priority access and preferred pricing.

Request a conversation →

Technical specifications

Enterprise-grade data. Community-owned heart.

For procurement teams and technical buyers — here is exactly what you are purchasing and how it is delivered.

Format

Uncompressed WAV (PCM)

Sampling rate

44.1 kHz / 48 kHz (studio standard)

Bit depth

16-bit / 24-bit

Channels

Mono — individual speaker clarity

Environment

Controlled acoustic hubs · <−60dB noise floor

File naming

SIQ_DBN_COL_F_22_001_042.wav
Project · Region · Dialect · Gender · Age · Speaker · Clip

Metadata

JSON/CSV manifest — Speaker ID, demographics, transcription, cultural context tags, dialect group

Transcription

99%+ accuracy · peer-reviewed "Team of 2" system

Task types

Scripted · Semi-scripted · Spontaneous conversational

Special markers

Spontaneous code-switching · low-resource dialect flags · natural acoustic environment tags

🛡 The Siqala Ethical Guarantee

✓

100% Informed Consent — signed Stakeholder Release Form before any recording begins.

✓

Paid before data reaches market — R200 per session on recording day via Instant Money.

✓

80% community payout — of every base sale, always, without exception.

✓

Identity protected — personal information never sold. Anonymized Speaker IDs only.

✓

Granular speaker profiles — age, birthplace, dialect group, code-switching habits. Filter by any demographic.

All voice data encrypted and processed using the same security architecture as LexCrypta Global — forensic-grade data integrity infrastructure trusted by legal and financial institutions.

Why this community specifically

The rarest dialects in AI are spoken right here in Durban.

Global AI companies have billions of hours of English. They have almost nothing from communities like ours. That scarcity is our leverage — and your opportunity.

Cape Malay Afrikaans

Dialect code: MLY · Region: DBN/CPT

Centuries of history in this dialect — roots in enslaved people brought to the Cape from Indonesia, Malaysia and India. No major AI model speaks it. Entirely absent from every existing corpus.

Extremely rare · highest premium

KZN Coloured dialect and slang

Dialect code: COL · Region: DBN

The living language of Wentworth, Chatsworth and Sydenham. The way people actually talk — not what is in any textbook. Inaccessible to researchers from outside the community.

Unique · no substitute exists

isiZulu — Durban township voice

Dialect code: ZUL · Region: DBN

Durban Zulu sounds different to what researchers collect in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The rhythm, the local slang, the acoustic environment — all missing from existing datasets.

Distinct from all collected data

Natural code-switching

Trilingual · English / Afrikaans / isiZulu

This community moves fluidly between three languages in a single sentence — naturally, without thinking. That spontaneous trilingual pattern is extraordinarily rare NLP training data.

Irreplaceable · no equivalent exists

The number we are working toward

Youth unemployment in the coloured community at 10% — down from 65%.

That is not a slogan. It is a number. We can reach it — one member, one session, one same-day payout at a time. Every person who joins Siqala moves that number in the right direction.

Today — 65% unemployedOur goal — 10%

Progress updated as Siqala membership grows across Durban.

Who belongs here

If you are from this community, there is a place for you.

👩‍👧

Mothers at home

Come in once a week. Bring the children. Leave with R200 in your pocket the same day. No rigid schedules, no pressure, no commitment beyond what you can give.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Youth with nowhere to start

If you speak Afrikaans, Zulu, or any mix — your voice is worth more than 13 times the minimum wage per hour to the people building AI. No matric. No experience. Just show up.

👴

Elders who carry the old language

The older the dialect, the rarer the data. Grandparents who speak old Cape Malay Afrikaans hold something no one else in the world can provide — and we pay for it immediately.

Who we are

Built by people who have something to prove.

Siqala is a founding team of builders who listen first and build second. Every product we have ever made started with someone in our community who was struggling. This one is no different.

Carm

Co-Founder · Product & Vision

📍 Durban, South Africa / Melbourne, Australia

System architect and product owner across a portfolio of community-first platforms. Siqala was born from listening — to her community, her family, and the people the system forgot to build doors for.

Joe

Co-Founder · Systems & Partnerships

📍 Michigan, USA

Former mortgage broker turned backend developer. Joe builds the infrastructure that makes Siqala run and leads US partner relationships — bringing the technical credibility and commercial relationships that turn community data into global opportunity.

🌱

Community Director

Durban Operations · Coming Soon

📍 Durban, South Africa

Our Durban community lead is being confirmed. This role is the heartbeat of Siqala — the person on the ground who members trust, who runs the sessions, and who makes sure every payout lands right.

In loving memory · This is for you

Ian Nagel

Cape Town · Durban · Australia · Always South African at heart

Ian was born in Cape Town and carried his community with him wherever he went — to Durban, to Australia, and everywhere in between. He gave back to South Africa his whole life, through his family and through quiet acts of generosity that most people never knew about. He settled far from home but never forgot where he came from. He missed his community. He missed his people.

What we didn't know until later was that Ian spoke the languages of South Africa — not just a word here and there, but fluently, effortlessly, moving between them the way water moves. He understood that people feel seen when you meet them in their own language. He lived that truth every day.

The unemployment breaking this community apart would have broken his heart. So we build this for him — and in his name, we say to every person who walks through Siqala's doors: your voice has always had value. We just needed to build the place to prove it.

Sawubona Goeie môre Hello Molo

Siqala is dedicated to Ian Nagel — father, connector, community man.
From all of us: sawubona, hello, goeie môre, and welcome.
We do this for you, Dad. 🕯️

Cape Town born · South African always · Forever in the language of his people

Be part of our founding member group.

We are building our first cohort now at Veronica's community hub in Durban. Leave your details and we will reach out on WhatsApp when your first session is ready. Come once — earn R200 the same day.

The most transparentAfrican audio datasetin the world.