Danny Manu, the Ghanaian-British whose real-time language translation ear buds has caught public attention across Africa may soon make a footprint in Ghana as he hopes to expand his business.
His company, Mymanu is looking to add African languages to the dozens of languages programmed for live translation on the CLIK+ and CLIK S ear buds which have been widely accepted in the US and European market.
He is considering Ghana to establish a centre that will host the team of engineers to carry out the research and development on the adventure.
Mymanu has sold hundreds of thousands of the CLIK + and CLIK S ear buds in the US and Europe which are the company’s major markets.
These markets have ensured that the CLIK+ device is sold out and now exerting pressure on Mr. Manu and his team to develop 2nd generation.
“In terms of numbers, I’ll say CLIK S has been doing well. In terms of numbers, we are looking at hundreds of thousands. We have about 20,000 – 100,000 users of our live translation system already, in a Citi News interview” he said.
Uptake of the products in Africa has not been as significant but the company wants to take up the challenge from 2022.
“We need to get some data and that will give us a better understanding on how we could dedicate an R&D team to work on some of the African languages which is something we are looking to do from next year. We can have an R&D centre in Ghana or somewhere in Africa to start working with the locals to develop the languages,” he said in the interview.
Africa is highly diverse linguistically as experts estimate as many as 2,000 different languages spoken across the continent.
This would be a huge test for Danny Manu’s Mymanu team and he is perfectly aware of this situation.
“It is a very hard thing. It is a very complex process and so our objective is that next year as we dedicate a team of engineers to start R&D and African languages, we will actually have a location in Ghana to enable us to make that happen because we need to understand the language, know the different dialect accents to make that work, but it is one of our priorities,” he explained.
Having innovative products developed nearly half a decade ago and getting the entire buzz in recent times is very encouraging according to Mr. Manu.
He revealed that the company will soon launch its latest product that “will be a game-changer and will be a new technology addressing a particular challenge.”
The 33-year-old says he hopes to inspire other entrepreneurs in Ghana and black entrepreneurs in general with his work and achievements.
Having last visited Ghana in 2012, he hopes to return soon to the land that birthed his parents.
