# Afro-MNIST: Synthetic generation of MNIST-style datasets for low-resource languages

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.13509 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13509/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 28 Sep 2020.

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## Abstract (arXiv)

We present Afro-MNIST, a set of synthetic MNIST-style datasets for four orthographies used in Afro-Asiatic and Niger-Congo languages: Ge`ez (Ethiopic), Vai, Osmanya, and N'Ko. These datasets serve as "drop-in" replacements for MNIST. We also describe and open-source a method for synthetic MNIST-style dataset generation from single examples of each digit. These datasets can be found at https://github.com/Daniel-Wu/AfroMNIST. We hope that MNIST-style datasets will be developed for other numeral systems, and that these datasets vitalize machine learning education in underrepresented nations in the research community.