When Apotierioluwa Owoade worked at Aforevo, a Lagos-based streaming and dubbing firm from 2022 to 2023, he witnessed something that bothered him deeply. The traditional dubbing industry was not just expensive—it was fundamentally broken for African content.
Translating a single film into another language costs upwards of $500,000 for a full production, according to Owoade. But the cost was only part of the problem that eventually led him to co-found Reedapt, an AI-powered video dubbing platform targeting African filmmakers and content creators.
The Translation Crisis
What frustrated Owoade more than the price tag was the quality. Voice actors, overstretched and underpaid, were flattening the emotional texture of scenes they recorded. The existing software tools were no better at capturing local nuances.
"I had seen Yoruba rendered so poorly that the phrase 'I am pregnant' came out flatly as 'I have a ball,'" Owoade explained, his face visibly grimacing during our video call.
This sparked an idea. Owoade reached out to his friend David Mac-Asore, then a Computer Engineering undergraduate and software developer. Their friendship was anchored through shared work at Living Faith Church Worldwide International, one of Nigeria's largest churches.
Building the Team
Mac-Asore was immediately interested but knew they needed machine learning expertise. He reached out to two former classmates from Covenant University, a private Christian university in Ota: Maryann Nnaji and Emmanuel Ibiang, both 2024 graduates.
The four founders initially called their project the "Hagen Project" before evolving it into Reedapt in 2025. I have to admit, the original name made me chuckle—though their mission is anything but amusing.
Nnaji brought crucial machine learning depth to the team. She had previously built a sign language-to-speech and text model as part of her undergraduate thesis, working through the complete pipeline from data collection to training, deployment, and testing.
"When I started the project, it was just a way to actually see how technology could be a way of bridging this gap," Nnaji said. "To prove something to myself that this is applicable."
Emmanuel Ibiang joined as product engineer, bringing what the team describes as an obsession with usability—a critical perspective when AI engineers might prioritize accuracy over user experience.
Targeting African Content
Reedapt is now positioning itself as the go-to dubbing and real-time multilingual streaming platform for Nollywood filmmakers, churches, and African content creators who want their work to travel beyond what the English language alone can achieve.
What particularly notable about this venture is how it addresses a very real problem in the African content ecosystem. The dubbing industry has remained prohibitively expensive while failing to serve local contexts effectively.
The timing seems right too. As African content gains global recognition—think about the success of Nollywood productions on international platforms—there is growing demand for quality multilingual versions that maintain cultural authenticity.
This connects to broader trends we have been covering in our AI coverage, where African startups are building AI solutions specifically designed for local challenges rather than adapting Western models.
For a team of four recent graduates taking on an industry dominated by expensive traditional processes, Reedapt faces significant challenges. But their firsthand experience with the pain points they are trying to solve gives them a real advantage in understanding what African content creators actually need.