Company

The intelligent
connection point.

Making every African business reachable — in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and English.

"Ori" is Yoruba for intelligence, wisdom, and divine consciousness. "Node" is a network connection point. Together: the intelligent connection point for African business.

Orinode mission

Build the voice infrastructure for African languages.

Nigerian-grade speech recognition, text-to-speech, and language identification — trained on Nigerian audio, with native mid-sentence code-switching across Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and English.

Maraba mission

Stop Nigerian businesses losing customers to missed calls.

An AI receptionist that answers every call in the caller's language, takes the booking, sends a WhatsApp summary, and never says "please hold." Built on Orinode's speech stack.

Vision

"To become the default voice infrastructure for African commerce — the layer that makes every business, from market stalls to multinationals, always available."

Founding

Orinode is the speech-tech infrastructure company behind Nigerian-grade STT, TTS, and language identification — Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and English with native mid-sentence code-switching. Founded in Lagos by Usman Abubakar Aliyu, with Mustapha Umar Muhammad, Esq. as Head of Research.

Maraba is Orinode's first product: an AI receptionist for Nigerian businesses, built on the Orinode speech stack with a dialog model — the Maraba LLM — developed in-house by the Maraba team. Currently in private beta.

Contact the founder directly: usmanaliyu@orinode.ai

The stack

Two layers. One company.

Orinode owns the speech layer. Maraba is the product on top.

Orinode · infrastructure

Nigerian speech stack

  • ▸ Orinode STT — speech-to-text trained on Nigerian audio; preserves ƙ ɗ ɓ ị ọ ụ ẹ ṣ diacritics.
  • ▸ Orinode TTS — text-to-speech in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and English with native intonation.
  • ▸ LangID — per-utterance language detection enabling mid-sentence code-switching.
  • ▸ Owned end-to-end — no Google Speech, no AWS Transcribe.
Maraba · product

AI receptionist

  • ▸ Maraba LLM — dialog model trained in-house; receptionist-tuned for booking, FAQ, escalation.
  • ▸ KB grounding — answers from each business's knowledge base; never hallucinates prices or hours.
  • ▸ WhatsApp summary — structured post-call report in under 60 seconds.
  • ▸ Dashboard — call history, transcripts, escalation queue, team routing.
Team

The people building Maraba.

A small, focused team in Nigeria.

UA
Usman Abubakar Aliyu
Founder · Orinode & Maraba

Building Orinode's speech stack (STT, TTS, LangID) and the Maraba product (dialog LLM, receptionist UX, dashboard). Based in Lagos. Direct line: usmanaliyu@orinode.ai

MM
Mustapha Umar Muhammad, Esq.
Head of Research · Orinode

Leads research on Nigerian language coverage, dataset quality, and ethical-use policy across the Orinode speech stack and the Maraba LLM. Lawyer + researcher background.

More team announcements as the beta cohort grows. Hiring engineers? Send your CV to hello@orinode.ai.

Values

What we stand for.

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Linguistic Respect
Language is identity. We don't treat Hausa, Igbo, or Yoruba as secondary options. Every language the platform supports is built with the same depth and care as English.
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Reliability First
A call centre that goes down costs businesses real money. We engineer for uptime, publish honest incident reports, and own failures when they happen. A formal SLA will be published with the public launch.
language
African-Built, African-Priced
Our infrastructure, team, and pricing are designed for African businesses — not imported from Silicon Valley and localised as an afterthought. Naira pricing, African servers, African support hours.
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Transparency
Honest pricing. No hidden fees. No dark patterns. If something breaks, you hear from us first — not after you notice. Audit logs, webhook events, and usage data are all yours to see.
security
Privacy by Design
Caller data belongs to the business that collected it — not to us. Built for NDPR (Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023) compliance; DPO appointment + NITDA filing planned before public launch. Caller number masking is built in. We never use customer call data to train shared models.
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Speed as Respect
A caller waiting 5 seconds for an AI to respond is a caller who hangs up. Sub-second response time is not a feature — it is the minimum viable experience. We optimise relentlessly.
Timeline

Building the future
one call at a time.

2025
Orinode founded — Nigerian speech infrastructure
Usman Abubakar Aliyu founds Orinode to build the Nigerian-language speech stack — STT, TTS, and language identification — that didn't exist in usable form for African developers. Mustapha Umar Muhammad, Esq. joins as Head of Research.
Late 2025 – Q1 2026
Orinode speech stack milestones
Orinode STT and TTS reach internal prototype quality on Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and English. Mid-sentence Yoruba↔English code-switching handled. Hausa diacritics (ƙ, ɗ, ɓ) round-trip through the tokenizer without loss.
Q1 2026
Maraba project starts (Orinode's first product)
The Maraba team begins building the AI receptionist on Orinode's speech stack. The dialog brain — the Maraba LLM — enters in-house training. Receptionist-tuned intents: booking, FAQ, escalation, KB-grounded answers.
May 2026
Maraba private beta opens (invite-only)
Currently here. Maraba is invite-only — onboarding the first cohort of Nigerian businesses (restaurants, clinics, logistics teams). Request beta access via the contact form.
Later 2026 (planned)
Public launch & developer API
Open signup, four subscription tiers, PAYG billing. Python and TypeScript SDKs. Pricing and infrastructure on this site reflect the planned launch state — not the beta state.
2027 onward (aspiration)
Pan-African expansion.
If the Nigerian beta validates the model, we want to extend to other African markets — Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania — and add Swahili and Twi support. Pace depends on demand and capital. Nothing committed yet.

Built in Lagos, Nigeria.

We write code on Lagos time. We understand the power cut mid-call. We build for the realities of African business because we live them.

location_on Lagos, Nigeria groups African-founded team dns African servers
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