Transcribe Hausa audio with WhisperAI
WhisperAI transcribes Hausa (Hausa) audio for the around 80 million speakers, including 50+ million native and substantial second-language use as a West African lingua franca who use the language across northern Nigeria, Niger, Ghana, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan and across West Africa. Built on OpenAI Whisper and tuned for the realities of Hausa speech, the service produces publication-grade transcripts in Latin (Boko) primarily; Arabic-based Ajami in religious contexts.
Who actually needs Hausa transcription
Hausa demand comes from northern Nigerian media (Kano is the centre of Kannywood), West African NGO documentation, BBC Hausa and other international Hausa-language services.
Dialects and varieties handled
- Kano (standard)
- Sokoto
- Zaria
- Niger Hausa
- Ghanaian Hausa
Hausa as West Africa's working lingua franca
Hausa functions as a working language across most of West Africa, with significant variation between the Kano standard and the dialects spoken further west and south. Whisper produces native Hausa in Latin (Boko) script and handles the tonal distinctions that consumer ASR routinely flattens.
Kano standard Hausa and the major regional varieties (Sokoto, Zaria, Niger, Ghanaian) are supported.
How Hausa speakers actually use WhisperAI
- Kannywood and northern Nigerian mediaHausa film and TV producers transcribe dialogue for caption files and translation pipelines.
- West African NGO field documentationOrganisations operating across northern Nigeria, Niger and Chad transcribe Hausa stakeholder interviews for reporting.
- International Hausa-language broadcastingBBC Hausa, VOA Hausa and DW Hausa transcribe interviews for editorial use.
- Hausa academic and oral historyResearchers document Hausa cultural and historical recordings.
What Hausa transcripts include
Native Latin (Boko) primarily; Arabic-based Ajami in religious contexts
Output in Latin (Boko) primarily; Arabic-based Ajami in religious contexts with all diacritics, tone marks, special characters and script-specific conventions preserved — never transliteration.
Speaker labels
Diarisation that separates and labels speakers in Hausa interviews, panels and multi-party meetings.
Timestamps and SRT
Word-level timestamps and SRT subtitle export for Hausa video captioning, with proper line-breaking for the script.
Editor and exports
In-browser editor with PDF, DOCX, TXT and SRT exports. Edit the transcript without leaving the browser, then download the format your downstream workflow expects.
How to transcribe Hausa audio
Upload your Hausa recording
Drop in MP3, WAV, M4A, MP4 or similar — files up to 5GB. Long-form Hausa interviews, lectures and meetings work without splitting.
Whisper transcribes the audio
The model recognises Hausa speech across the dialects above and outputs Latin (Boko) primarily; Arabic-based Ajami in religious contexts. Code-switched English and other languages in the same recording are handled inline.
Edit, label and export
Open the transcript in the editor, fix any names or terms, label speakers, and export to PDF, DOCX, TXT or SRT. Optional AI summary surfaces the key points and decisions.
Transcribe in 100+ languages
WhisperAI supports Hausa alongside over 100 other languages with the same accuracy and editor experience.
Other widely-used pages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, Italian, and 80+ more languages including Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Malay, Filipino and beyond.
See every supported language, with transcription, realtime and translation coverage.
Transcription guides and best practices
Start transcribing Hausa today
Sign up free, drop in your first Hausa file, and have a usable transcript in minutes.