Kifuliiru Lab is The Kifuliiru Language Laboratory: a research and development space dedicated to preserving, strengthening, and extending the Kifuliiru language through content generation, digital platforms, and community-centered language work.
Our mission is to make Kifuliiru more usable, teachable, and durable in modern life. We do this by producing content, building digital tools, and creating a stronger language infrastructure from within the community it serves.
Our long-term vision is not only preservation, but continuity: a Kifuliiru language that can function across education, technology, communication, and future AI systems.
Kifuliiru is the language spoken by the Bafuliiru (also known as Abafuliiru) people. The Bafuliiru are the traditional inhabitants of Ibufuliiru, their ancestral homeland and kingdom in Uvira, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. The Kifuliiru language is part of the Bantu language family and is spoken by approximately 500,000 or more people in the Uvira region of South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ibufuliiru represents the traditional territory and cultural heartland of the Bafuliiru people in Uvira, South Kivu, encompassing their historical kingdom and chiefdom structures that have existed for centuries before colonial boundaries were established.
We use formulas, templates, and structured workflows to produce educational content and language materials at scale.
We build websites, web apps, and mobile tools that make Kifuliiru usable in everyday digital life.
Native-speaker review and community feedback keep the work linguistically accurate and culturally grounded.
We organize data, content, and systems so future Kifuliiru tools can grow on a stronger foundation.
Our present work is focused on building a durable content and platform foundation for the Kifuliiru language.
Ayivugwe Kabemba Mukome leads Kifuliiru Lab as both founder and director, bringing together native language expertise, technical innovation, and community-centered research to preserve the Kifuliiru language.
Native speaker of Kifuliiru and member of the Bafuliiru people from Ibufuliiru in Uvira, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Deeply connected to the cultural and linguistic traditions that form the foundation of this preservation work.
Research Lead, Technical Lead, and Data Science specialist with expertise in computational linguistics, template-based content generation, and scalable methodology development for language preservation.
Leading the development of scalable methodologies that can be replicated across other endangered languages, creating a framework for community-centered language preservation.
Successfully transformed Kifuliiru from minimal documentation to a comprehensive digital ecosystem with 12+ platforms, 141,000+ projected educational materials, and community-validated content.
The letter K anchors the lab in Kifuliiru itself, while the sparkles point to step-by-step growth: from language data and content generation today toward stronger digital infrastructure, computational tools, and future AI systems.
Our motto and language philosophy express the same commitment: Kifuliiru should not be preserved only as memory, but used as a living language for modern life.
