Now in Beta

Build with Africa's Languages

Embed, translate, and understand 22 Bantu languages. Purpose-built AI for English ↔ Bantu that actually gets the grammar right.

Explore APIs Documentation
POST /v1/embed
curl -X POST https://api.bhala.ai/v1/embed \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer bh_sk_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "input": "Sawubona, ngingakusiza kanjani?",
    "model": "bantu-embed-v1",
    "dimensions": 256
  }'
Response
{
  "object": "embedding",
  "data": [{
    "embedding": [0.0234, -0.0891, 0.1456, ...],
    "dimensions": 256
  }],
  "usage": { "total_tokens": 8 }
}

Products

Everything you need to build with Bantu languages

From embeddings to translation to a complete NLP toolkit — purpose-built for Africa's most spoken language family.

Available Now

Bantu Embeddings API

Generate high-quality vector embeddings for Bantu text. Power search, classification, and RAG in 22 African languages with a single API call.

Learn more
Beta

Translation API

Translate between English and Bantu languages with models purpose-built for African language structure. Serve your customers in their native language.

Learn more
Available Now

Reranker API

Improve search relevance by reranking candidate results against a query. Purpose-built for Bantu languages, so your RAG pipelines and search engines return the most relevant documents first.

Learn more
Live

Bhala Keyboard

Access to your language is a cultural right. The Bhala Keyboard democratizes advanced NLP by putting it directly in people's hands — free, offline, and accessible to everyone. Intelligent autocomplete, spell correction, and word prediction for African languages.

Learn more
Coming Soon

NLP Suite

Language identification, Named Entity Recognition, sentiment analysis, content classification, and document search — all purpose-built for Bantu languages. The full-stack NLP toolkit that doesn't exist yet for 350M+ speakers.

Learn more
22
Languages supported
350M+
Native speakers covered
<100ms
API latency
$0.08
Per 1M tokens

Developer Experience

Simple API, powerful results

A single API call is all you need. Embed Bantu text for search and RAG, translate English into local languages, or analyze text \u2014 all with the same familiar REST interface.

Drop-in replacement for Voyage, Cohere, or OpenAI embeddings
No NLP expertise required — our models handle the complexity
Start for free, scale to millions of requests
Read the docs
bhala_demo.py
from bhala import Bhala

client = Bhala(api_key="bh_sk_...")

# Generate embeddings for Bantu text
embeddings = client.embed(
    input="Sawubona, ngingakusiza kanjani?",
    model="bantu-embed-v1"
)
print(len(embeddings.data[0].embedding))
# → 256

# Translate English → IsiZulu
result = client.translate(
    text="Your payment was successful.",
    source="en",
    target="zu"
)
print(result.translation)
# → "Inkokhelo yakho iphumelele."

Use Cases

Built for the industries that need it most

From financial compliance in South Africa's 11 official languages to humanitarian communication across East Africa.

Financial Services

Translate your English banking app, notifications, and compliance documents into South Africa’s 11 official languages. Understand customer messages in their native language.

Banks, insurers, fintech

Telecoms

Push English notifications into 22 local languages. Classify and understand customer support messages in Bantu languages. Serve 350M+ speakers at scale.

Safaricom, MTN, Vodacom

Government & NGOs

Translate public services and health materials from English into local languages. Meet UOLA compliance requirements. Deliver humanitarian communication that reaches people in their own language.

Government, UN agencies, education

Backed by

Techstars

Start building with Bhala

Get free API access and start integrating Bantu language understanding into your applications today.

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