# How to Download the Afrispeech-200 Dataset on Linux

So I needed to download the AfriSpeech-200 dataset for my speech recognition research — 200 hours of Pan-African accented English speech across 120 accents from 13 countries. Simple enough, right?

Not quite. Here's what I ran into and how I fixed it.

* * *

## What is AfriSpeech-200?

AfriSpeech-200 is an open-source Pan-African speech dataset designed for clinical and general domain Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). It contains:

*   **67,577 audio clips** from 2,463 unique speakers
    
*   **120 African accents** across 13 countries
    
*   **200+ hours** of speech data
    
*   Both **clinical and general domain** transcripts
    

It lives on Hugging Face at `tobiolatunji/afrispeech-200`.

* * *

## My Setup

*   **OS:** Pop!\_OS (Ubuntu-based Linux)
    
*   **Starting point:** Clean slate — no Python environment, nothing installed
    

* * *

## Step 1: Check Python

Python 3 comes pre-installed on Pop!\_OS. Verify with:

```bash
python3 --version
```

If it's missing:

```bash
sudo apt update && sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-venv -y
```

* * *

## Step 2: Create a Virtual Environment

```bash
python3 -m venv ~/afrispeech_env
source ~/afrispeech_env/bin/activate
```

* * *

## Step 3: Install Hugging Face Libraries

```bash
pip install datasets==2.14.6 huggingface_hub
```

> **Why** `datasets==2.14.6`**?** AfriSpeech-200 uses an older-style loading script. Newer versions of the `datasets` library may throw compatibility errors, so pinning to 2.14.6 avoids that headache.

* * *

## Step 4: Log in to Hugging Face

You need a free Hugging Face account. Get your token at [huggingface.co/settings/tokens](https://huggingface.co/settings/tokens), then run:

```bash
huggingface-cli login
```

Paste your token when prompted.

* * *

## Step 5: Check Your Disk Space

This dataset is **~120GB**. Make sure you have enough space before starting:

```bash
df -h ~
```

* * *

## Step 6: Download the Dataset

> **Note:** If you see a warning that `huggingface-cli download` is deprecated, use `hf download` instead.

```bash
hf download tobiolatunji/afrispeech-200 \
  --repo-type dataset \
  --local-dir ~/afrispeech-200
```

Grab a cup of tea — this will take a while depending on your internet speed. ☕

* * *

## Step 7: Move to Your Projects Folder

```bash
mv ~/afrispeech-200 ~/projects/afrispeech-200
```

* * *

## Verify the Download

Check what you have:

```bash
ls ~/projects/afrispeech-200/
```

Count training samples:

```bash
tail -n +2 ~/projects/afrispeech-200/transcripts/*/train.csv | grep -v "^==>" | wc -l
```

* * *

## Quick Recap

| Step | Command |
| --- | --- |
| Create environment | `python3 -m venv ~/afrispeech_env` |
| Activate | `source ~/afrispeech_env/bin/activate` |
| Install libs | `pip install datasets==2.14.6 huggingface_hub` |
| Login | `huggingface-cli login` |
| Download | `hf download tobiolatunji/afrispeech-200 --repo-type dataset --local-dir ~/afrispeech-200` |

* * *

That's it! The dataset should now be on your machine and ready for experiments.

If you run into any issues, drop a comment below — happy to help.

* * *

*Ridwan Bello is an ML researcher exploring African language technologies. Follow the journey at* [*blog.ridwanbello.io*](http://blog.ridwanbello.io)