East Africa Public-Domain Corpora
Collection
Digitized public-domain sources: history, law, health, agriculture, maps, language. Terra preta for agents — soil that compounds with use. • 8 items • Updated
id string | source string | domain string | swahili string | english string | historical_note string | variant_spellings list | part_of_speech string | example string | tags list | related_terms dict | legal_contexts list | type string | theme string |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SW001 | Krapf, Dictionary of the Suaheli Language (1882, PD) | governance | serikali | government/authority | From Arabic 'shariki' (partner/associate). Used in East African coastal governance. | [
"serikali",
"serikale"
] | noun | serikali ya nchi (government of the land) | [
"governance",
"arabic-loan",
"coastal"
] | null | null | null | null |
SW002 | Krapf 1882 (PD) | land | shamba | farm/cultivated field | Core agricultural term across all Swahili-speaking regions. Extends to any smallholder plot. | [
"shamba"
] | noun | shamba la mahindi (maize field) | [
"agriculture",
"land",
"universal"
] | null | null | null | null |
SW003 | Krapf 1882 (PD) | water | mto | river/stream | Primary water vocabulary. Smaller: kijito. Seasonal: mto wa kiangazi (dry season stream). | [
"mto"
] | noun | mto Tana (Tana River) | [
"water",
"geography",
"river"
] | null | null | null | null |
SW004 | Taylor, African Aphorisms (1891, PD) | governance | haki | right/justice/entitlement | Legal and moral term. From Arabic 'haqq'. Central to dispute resolution in customary law. | [
"haki"
] | noun | haki za ardhi (land rights) | [
"law",
"rights",
"justice",
"arabic-loan"
] | null | null | null | null |
SW005 | Steere, Handbook of the Swahili Language (1870, PD) | trade | biashara | trade/commerce | Core commercial term. From Arabic 'tijara'. Swahili coast commercial tradition 1000+ years. | [
"biashara",
"beshera"
] | noun | biashara ya pwani (coastal trade) | [
"trade",
"commerce",
"arabic-loan",
"coast"
] | null | null | null | null |
SW006 | Krapf 1882 (PD) | health | dawa | medicine/treatment | From Arabic 'dawa'. Encompasses both traditional and biomedical treatment. | [
"dawa",
"dawa ya asili (traditional medicine)"
] | noun | dawa ya malaria (malaria medicine) | [
"health",
"medicine",
"arabic-loan"
] | null | null | null | null |
SW007 | Krapf 1882 (PD) | agriculture | mvua | rain | Critical agricultural calendar term. Masika: long rains. Vuli: short rains. Kiangazi: dry season. | null | noun | null | [
"rain",
"seasons",
"agriculture",
"calendar"
] | {
"masika": "long rains (March-May)",
"vuli": "short rains (Oct-Dec)",
"kiangazi": "dry season"
} | null | null | null |
SW008 | Sacleux, Dictionnaire Français-Swahili (1891, PD) | land | ardhi | land/earth/soil | From Arabic 'ard'. Land tenure concept central to East African customary law. | null | noun | null | [
"land",
"rights",
"law",
"arabic-loan"
] | null | [
"ardhi ya umma (public/community land)",
"ardhi ya serikali (government land)",
"ardhi ya wenyeji (indigenous land)"
] | null | null |
PRV001 | Taylor, African Aphorisms (1891, PD) | decision-making | Haraka haraka haina baraka. | Hurry hurry has no blessing. (Haste makes waste.) | null | null | null | null | [
"proverb",
"decision",
"patience",
"wisdom"
] | null | null | proverb | patience and deliberation |
PRV002 | Taylor, African Aphorisms (1891, PD) | coordination | Umoja ni nguvu, utengano ni udhaifu. | Unity is strength, separation is weakness. | null | null | null | null | [
"proverb",
"coordination",
"unity",
"collective-action"
] | null | null | proverb | collective action |
PRV003 | Taylor, African Aphorisms (1891, PD) | governance | Asiyekuwepo na kosa lake hukosekana. | He who is absent, his fault is forgiven. (Presence matters in decision-making.) | null | null | null | null | [
"proverb",
"governance",
"accountability",
"participation"
] | null | null | proverb | participation and accountability |
PRV004 | Taylor, African Aphorisms (1891, PD) | social | Damu nzito kuliko maji. | Blood is thicker than water. | null | null | null | null | [
"proverb",
"family",
"kinship",
"social-capital"
] | null | null | proverb | family and kinship networks |
PRV005 | Taylor, African Aphorisms (1891, PD) | decision-making | Mchagua jembe si mkulima. | One who chooses his hoe is no farmer. (Don't be too selective; start the work.) | null | null | null | null | [
"proverb",
"action",
"farming",
"pragmatism"
] | null | null | proverb | pragmatism and action bias |
Swahili Historical Corpus — Public Domain Sources
Historical Swahili linguistic data from 19th century public domain dictionaries and texts. Structured for NLP training, language model development, and cultural AI applications.
Swahili is spoken by 200+ million people across East and Central Africa. This corpus addresses the documented data gap in Swahili NLP resources.
Sources (All Public Domain)
All works published before 1928:
| Author | Work | Date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ludwig Krapf | Dictionary of the Suaheli Language | 1882 | Public Domain |
| W.E. Taylor | African Aphorisms (Saws from Swahili-land) | 1891 | Public Domain |
| Edward Steere | Handbook of the Swahili Language | 1870 | Public Domain |
| Charles Sacleux | Dictionnaire Français-Swahili | 1891 | Public Domain |
Content
- Core vocabulary with historical context
- Domain-specific terminology (governance, agriculture, health, trade, land)
- Proverbs (Taylor 1891) — oral tradition documented in public domain
- Etymology notes (Arabic loan words, indigenous roots)
- Related terms and variant spellings
Use Cases
- Training Swahili NLP models
- Swahili civic AI applications (haki-ya-kazi-mcp, county-mcp)
- Historical linguistics research
- Cultural context for AI agents operating in East Africa
Related
- swahili-civic-nlp
- tafsiri-mcp — translation tools
Use this dataset with the coordination stack
- Evaluate any model on Swahili agent tasks: kipimo —
pip install kipimo· leaderboard - Run the MCP servers this data serves:
pip install reli-cli && reli list— 33 servers on the official MCP Registry underio.github.gabrielmahia - Route tasks across servers: africa-coord-bus — offline-first event bus with a built-in Kenya routing table
- All East Africa datasets: huggingface.co/gmahia
Open weights welcome: these resources are model-agnostic by design — closed APIs, open-weight models (Kimi, GLM, DeepSeek, Nemotron, Llama), and small distilled models score on equal terms.
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