Developing solutions for Africans without access to smartphones under the auspices of KrosAI
In the dynamic world of African tech, Joshua Firima's latest venture, KrosAI, is making waves. The company, founded in the midst of smartphone boom, is set to launch Oracle, a phone-based AI assistant, in July 2025.
Oracle is designed with a unique focus on helping users in areas with patchy network coverage access AI tools through simple phone calls. This innovation comes at a time when Nigeria's 2023 cash crunch saw the decline of Moosbu, a platform similar to Moniepoint and Opay, paving the way for KrosAI.
Joshua Firima, the brains behind KrosAI, started his entrepreneurial journey helping Africans install applications and games on their phones as smartphone brands like Infinix and Tecno gained prominence. He now believes that the next frontier in banking and other industries is making artificial intelligence accessible to Africans often overlooked by Silicon Valley's English-first products.
Oracle's voice tools are currently better suited for accented Nigerian, South African, Kenyan, and Ghanaian English, making it a localised solution. For businesses handling high-volume phone calls, Oracle's API can provide the foundation for developing cost-efficient customer support channels tailored to local contexts.
Individuals can benefit from Oracle too. It can provide answers to simple health-related queries, offer real-time news updates, and provide educational support with a simple phone call. KrosAI's voice and text models are trained with their own datasets, with a current focus on helping businesses integrate natural-language voice options to their product offerings.
KrosAI's flagship product, Oracle, is designed to help banks, telcos, e-commerce players, healthcare providers, and other businesses speak directly to customers in their own accents and native languages. This could potentially benefit the nearly 60% of Nigerians who still lack internet access, keeping them excluded from the digital economy.
Firima and his team are heading to San Francisco next month to showcase their products at the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield. They welcome the recent million-dollar push from MTN and Airtel to build Naira-priced cloud and AI infrastructure to serve local startups.
Firima's entrepreneurial journey is not new. He has previously launched a drag-and-drop website builder and Moosbu, a banking-as-a-service platform for small businesses. By 2023, financial inclusion in Nigeria was still at 64%, well below the 95% target set by the Nigerian government. With Oracle, Firima is chasing the future, aiming to make AI assistance accessible even in the most remote villages of Nigeria.
Read also:
- Understanding Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritis: Key Facts
- Trump's Policies: Tariffs, AI, Surveillance, and Possible Martial Law
- Expanded Community Health Involvement by CK Birla Hospitals, Jaipur, Maintained Through Consistent Outreach Programs Across Rajasthan
- Abdominal Fat Accumulation: Causes and Strategies for Reduction
