1
Haruffa
Letters A–Z
Laila shows a letter and says it twice. The child taps her and says it back. Groups of four, ticks as they land, checkpoints at eight and sixteen. After five misses she writes it in herself, so nobody is ever stuck.
A talking tutor that works with the internet off
The child speaks. The tablet listens. In Hausa.
English letters, words, numbers, spelling and reading for children aged six to ten. Every instruction spoken in Hausa, nothing to read, and no signal needed once it is installed.
A
B
C
D
Madalla! ✓
Wannan akuya ce.In English, it is: goat
Laila names it. The child taps it.
C
A
_
Tap the letters, or say them
Haruffa
Abubuwa
Rubutu
Lambobi
Nemo hoto
Karatu
Sannu! Ni ce Laila.Hello! I am Laila. Tap me and talk.
Tap a letter and Laila says it
She says "Wannan shi ne …", meaning "This is …"
Meet Laila
One guide, one voice, and she does everything
Everything on this page is her real recorded voice
Kratu has no menus, no settings and no written instructions. It has Laila. She asks every question, hears every answer, praises, corrects, re-teaches and keeps score. A child who cannot read a word can work the whole app by tapping her.
She isthe microphone
She speaksHausa
She teachesNigerian English
She nevermarks a child wrong
HausaWhat she says to the child
Nigerian EnglishThe words and lines she teaches
Nigerian English, not British or American: the English of the classroom, the market and the exam these children will actually sit.
What makes it different
Six things no other reading app does
A shared tablet, children who cannot read a word of English, and no signal. Every one of these follows from that.
Nothing to read
Every instruction is spoken aloud in Hausa. A child who has never been to school can use it alone, from the very first screen.
It actually listens
The child answers out loud and the tablet judges it on the device, with the answer narrowed to the words on the screen, so a good answer is not lost to the dictionary.
No password, no typing
Logging in is looking at Laila and saying your name. The face is kept as a pattern of numbers, never a photo, and never off the tablet.
Hausa first, always
The language a child thinks in explains the language school is taught in. Hausa question, Nigerian English answer, every single time.
Zero bytes to run
Install it once from any connection and it never needs another. No signal, no data plan, no waiting. The models live on the tablet.
A miss comes back
Nothing goes red and nothing is failed. A word the child missed comes back at the front of the next set of five, in a new order, and keeps coming back until they get it.
The six lessons
From a single letter to reading a word
One tap each from the home screen. A child can do one for ten minutes, or work through all six over months. These are the app's own icons, moving exactly as they do on the tablet.
2
Abubuwa
Words, ten domains
A photo of a goat. Laila says akuya, then "goat". The child repeats it in English. Animals, food, home, body, nature, vehicles, people, actions, clothing, school.
3
Rubutu
Spelling
A picture, empty slots, the alphabet. Tap the letters or say them. Say the whole word in one breath and Laila answers "Kai! Ka iya sosai!"
4
Lambobi
Numbers to 1000
Counting on palms, then the symbols, then tens and hundreds. Each stage is tested before the next one opens.
5
Nemo hoto
Listen and find
Laila names an animal in Hausa and English. The child taps the right one of four photos. Recognition before recall.
6
Karatu
Reading
The word in its places, letters lit as Laila reads them, then the child reads it alone. The photo is the reward for getting it.
Inside the app
This is what a child sees
Not pictures of the app. These are the app's own screens, running here on this page. Same tiles, same Laila, same colours, same wobble.
Musa · Zaɓi darasiPick a lesson
Haruffa
Abubuwa
Rubutu
Lambobi
Nemo hoto
Karatu
Zaɓi darasiSix modules, one tap each. No menus and nothing to read.
Haruffa · A B C DGroup 1 of 7
A
B
C
D
Madalla! ✓
HaruffaLaila says the letter twice. The child taps her and says it back.
Abubuwa · DabbobiAnimals · 3 / 5
Wannan akuya ce.Da Turanci, shi ne: goat
AbubuwaHausa first, then English, then the child says the English back.
Rubutu · hulaSpelling · 2 / 5
C
A
_
ABCD
EFGH
IJKL
MNOP
RubutuTap the letters or say them. Say all three at once and they fly in together.
Nemo hoto · Ina raƙumi?Listen and find
Ji kuma · hear it again
Nemo hotoLaila names it in Hausa and English. The child taps the right one of four.
Sannu!Step 3 of 4
Bari mu ga wa kake.Look at Laila and say your name
Sannu Musa! ✓
Shiga · logging inNo password, no typing. The tablet looks and listens at the same time.
Rendered live from the app's own markup and stylesheet. The wobble, the blink and the wing are the app's animations, not a recreation.
The content
Every picture is from here
A Sahel goat, a hula, a tsintsiya. Not clip art borrowed from somewhere else. Every image was made for northern Nigeria from a written brief, then checked one by one.
How a lesson works
Listen, say, read, write
The same four steps in every module.
Ji
Listen
Laila says it in Hausa, then in Nigerian English.
Faɗa
Say
The child speaks. The tablet listens, offline.
Karanta
Read
Letters appear as they are spoken.
Rubuta
Write
Spell by tapping or saying letters.
Mastery, not completion.
Progress is computed from what the child actually said, never typed in by an adult. Missed items come back until they stick, and checkpoints decide whether the next group opens or the last one is taught again.
Adaptive
A miss is not a mark. It is a plan.
Nothing in Kratu goes red and nothing is failed. What a child missed decides what they see next. The sequence, the repeats and the tests are built from their own record, every sitting.
Halima: “B”
“ban sani ba”
She misses it
A wrong answer, or the black slate for “I don’t know”. No cross, no buzzer, no score going down. Laila simply says a’a, sake gwadawa: no, try again.
123
→
Three goes, then she helps
Three wrong answers close one go. After three of those Laila says the letter herself. Being told the answer is teaching, not a penalty. After five she writes it in and the group moves on, so no child is ever stuck on one letter.
B
+4
next set of five
It leads the next five
Every lesson works in sets of five. What was missed comes back at the front of the next set, filled out with new words and ones already passed, in a new order so it is recognised and not just remembered in place.
Then the whole alphabet asks again
A group is taught, recalled in order, then recalled scattered. A check comes at eight letters and again at sixteen, and two finals cover A–Z. A letter learned in group one is still asked in the final.
Each lesson keeps its own record: Haruffa its letters, Abubuwa its words, Rubutu its spellings. Mastery is computed from what the child actually said, never typed in by an adult.
Offline by design
Serious AI on a cheap tablet, with no internet
Everything a child sees, hears and says is handled by models running inside the tablet itself. Install it once from any connection, then never again, including the way they log in.
Logging in, step by step
No password, no typing, nothing to read. This is the whole sequence, and what is running underneath each step.
-
1
Girl or boy Hausa is gender-marked, so this one tap decides every word Laila will use from here on.
Yarinya
Yaro
-
2
Look at Laila The camera finds one face and turns it into a pattern of numbers. The picture itself is never written down.512 numbers ✓
-
3
Say your name The voice becomes numbers too. Face and voice have to agree before anyone is let in.“Halima”
-
✓
In, and straight back to work Greeted by name and returned to the lesson she stopped at. A child the tablet has never seen is enrolled on the spot.HaruffaAbubuwaRubutuLambobiNemo hotoKaratu
Unsure between two children? Laila shows two photos and reads the names aloud rather than guessing.
Who it is for
For the child who has a language, but not this one
Every child Kratu is built for already speaks fluently, argues, jokes and bargains, all in Hausa. What they do not have is the language every exam, form and job in the country is written in. They are not slow learners. They are being taught in a language nobody has taught them.
Kratu is going into shared tablets at learning centres in Northern Nigeria, starting in Potiskum, Yobe State. One tablet, several children, no signal, no accounts to set up.
Who built it, and why
In an ideal world, Kratu would not need to exist
A child should learn English at school. That is what school is for. But the schools are not good enough, and the teachers are rarely better than the pupils: in Kaduna, two in three failed a Primary 4 exam. Until the schools can do their job, Kratu does this part of it.
Sani Yusuf, founder
Sani Yusuf
Founder, Kratu · London and Nigeria
Twenty years building software and teaching other people to build it. Kratu is the first thing he has built for children who cannot yet read the language it teaches.
Product roadmap
How Kratu pays for itself
The centre version is free and always will be. Everything below is the same engine, released in order, and each one funds the next.
- 1 Kratu at home For the Hausa-speaking child who already loves the app at the centre and wants to keep building their foundations at home. The same six lessons on the family phone, for a fee. It is the parents who tested it who asked for it.
- 2 Kratu as a learning companion For a child who already has the English, the same voice now teaches the subject rather than the language: maths, science and comprehension, spoken and answered aloud.
- 3 Kratu for teachers A login of their own and a private record. Kaduna's test showed two in three teachers could not pass a Primary 4 exam; this is a way to catch up without an audience. Licensed per centre or per state to basic-education boards, Almajiri programmes and NGOs.
- 4 Kratu in other languages The same engine for a child who does not speak Hausa. Yoruba and Igbo first, then Fulfulde, Kanuri, Pidgin and Swahili. A new language is a content layer, not a rebuild.
- 5 Kratu in reverse, for the diaspora The same engine pointed the other way: a child in London or Houston whose parents speak Hausa, Yoruba or Igbo and who does not. Around 17 million Nigerians live abroad and send $21B home a year, and the language is the thing they say they are losing.
- 6 Hausa and English speech data Native-speaker labelling and consent-based licensing of speech and image data. Data labelling is a $3.8B market heading to $17B by 2030.
The centre version stays free throughout. Sources: Grand View Research, data collection & labelling 2024–2030; Duolingo FY2025 results; NiDCOM diaspora estimate; World Bank remittances 2024.
The pilot
One centre, one year, one number to prove
Where each child was on day one, and how far they came. Everything below is built; what is left is a room, the tablets to put in it, and twelve months.
First centre
Potiskum
Yobe State, North-East Nigeria
- Yobe's largest city, on the Kano–Maiduguri road
- Hausa is the everyday language
- Dense enough for a walk-in centre
- Roughly two in three children are out of school
- A day's drive from Kano, where the tablets come in
What a sponsor gets back
Learning gain, per child
Letters, words and numbers mastered from day one to endline, computed from what each child actually said rather than from attendance.
Who came, and who stopped
Age, gender, in or out of school, Almajiri, and which children stopped coming. That last one is the number nobody likes to publish.
Live data, not a year-end report
The controller pushes every record to a remote store whenever it finds a connection.
What opening one takes
₦10MFundingOpens and runs the first centre for a year.
20+DevicesEntry-level 10-inch Android tablets, a controller, cases.
2FacilitatorsPlus a room in Potiskum and guardian outreach.
1EvaluatorIndependent, with a baseline and an endline.
Introductions matter as much as money: Yobe SUBEB, Potiskum schools, community and faith leaders.
Sponsor the first centre
Or part of one: tablets, a facilitator's year, or the evaluation.
Try it
Three lessons you can play
Laila's real recorded voice and the real pictures. Everything she says is captioned in English as it sounds. The last one is the test: pop the balloons in alphabetical order, with nobody reading the letters out.
Partner with us
What we are looking for
The app is built and self-funded. What it needs now is the things one person cannot make: a room, the tablets, the introductions, and someone independent to measure whether it worked.
◆
FundersA centre for a year, or part of one: the tablets, a facilitator's year, or the evaluation.
⌁
Device partnersEntry-level 10-inch Android tablets, a controller and cases. New or refurbished.
◎
IntroductionsState basic-education boards, schools, community and faith leaders. These matter as much as money.
✓
EvaluatorsIndependent measurement: a baseline, an endline, and a published result either way.
ɗ
Hausa speakersNative-speaker recording is the next content step. The voice a child hears should be a person, not a model.
↗
NGOs and state partnersIf you already run centres in the North, Kratu can go into them rather than beside them.