Voices Project

A global-first in voice-powered citizen media

Impact at a Glance

Long before smart speakers and AI assistants, I was building tools that let people engage with journalism through their voices—starting with feature phone audio platforms before smartphones were widely available. That foundational work led to one of the first global-scale voice deployments in civic media: Voices@Al Jazeera.

In 2012, I led the design, approval, and global launch of this project. I negotiated a grant for the World Wide Web Foundation, founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and directed Al Jazeera’s first external nonprofit partnership. I authored the press releases, architected the product with our development partners, and coordinated on-the-ground execution with telecoms and civil society groups.

We launched the first pilot in Ghana in December 2012. Partnering with Airtel, we deployed a toll-free IVR platform that let any citizen call in, listen to curated Al Jazeera bulletins, and leave voice reports about the election in real time. We combined SMS outreach to 6,000 users, radio jingles across 7 stations, and a multilingual moderation interface to support the effort. The platform logged 2,152 calls and 480 user-generated reports, with 25 reports published globally on SoundCloud.

Building on those insights, I traveled to Kenya in February 2013 to launch the second pilot, timed with their presidential elections. We partnered with Safaricom to deploy the service and worked with local partners like Kibera TV and NYSA to support report moderation. The system recorded 2,046 calls, 606 reports, and resulted in 127 published pieces of citizen audio—a fivefold increase over the first pilot.

The platform, built in VoiceXML and hosted on a LAMP stack, was highly modular and localized—designed for replication across geographies. I also oversaw the rollout of new moderation tools, privacy safeguards, and workflows for editing and rating audio submissions.

These pilots weren’t just newsroom innovations. They were a global proof of concept for inclusive, voice-first media—empowering offline populations to join a global conversation, using the most accessible tool they had: their voice.