Hadithi Yetu · Our Story
Built in Dar es Salaam, for East Africa.
Mkalimani — Swahili for "interpreter" — was born from a simple observation: every translation tool treats Swahili as an afterthought. A 200-million-speaker language deserves a product designed around it, not bolted onto it.
With Tanzania-China trade crossing $1.4B annually and the SGR connecting Dar es Salaam to inland markets, the corridor needs translation infrastructure that understands Mandarin, English, French, and Kiswahili — natively.
Wasemaji wa Kiswahili
200M
across East Africa
TZS-CN biashara
$1.4B
annual trade volume
English skills gap
60%
Tanzanians want fluency
Timu · Team
The people behind Mkalimani
AM
Amani Mwakalonge
Mwanzilishi · Founder
Ex-Vodacom · UDSM CS '18. Built BaruaSafi (acquired 2023).
LW
Li Wei (李伟)
Mkurugenzi wa Teknolojia · CTO
10y at ByteDance Africa. Bridges Mandarin ↔ Swahili tooling.
DN
Dr. Neema Kileo
Mshauri wa Lugha · Linguistics Lead
PhD UDSM · author of 'Swahili in the Digital Age'.
Familia ya CamelTech · CamelTech Family
Tanzania's developer-first SaaS company. Other products in our family:
Kokotoa
Calculator API
TengenezaCV
CV Builder
BaruaSafi
Email cleaner
Mkatabafy
Contracts
Mkalimani
Translation
