Voice AI Research Participant – East & West Africa

We're looking for 50 participants across Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria to test a new voice assistant by making real phone calls and sharing feedback.

What you'll do

• Make 5 phone calls to a voice assistant over approximately 1 week

• Each call covers a real question from your own life in one of these topic areas:

  1. Health and wellbeing

  2. Work, farming, or business

  3. Learning and education

  4. Practical "how do I" questions (services, documents, money transfers)

  5. Free choice — anything you genuinely want to ask

• Complete a short survey after each call (~5 minutes)

• Calls are 5–15 minutes each, ending naturally (no hard cutoff)

Requirements

• 18+ years old, with a spread of ages (not only 18–30)

• Located in Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, or Nigeria

• Comfortable speaking English

• Willing to consent to call recording (audio and transcript) for evaluation and improvement purposes

Preferences (good-faith sourcing effort, not hard filters)

• Feature phone user, or smartphone user with limited or no data plan

• Limited or no prior experience with AI assistants

• Mix of genders and rural/urban locations

Compensation

• Paid based on actual time spent per completed call plus survey

• All call costs are covered — participants pay nothing

Important notes

• No scripts — we want real questions in your own words

• Do not share sensitive personal information (ID numbers, account details) during calls

• All calls are recorded and transcripts are generated for evaluation purposes

Timeline

• ~1 week for onboarding, then ~1 week of calls

• Total commitment: approximately 2–3 hours over 2 weeks

We consider all qualified applicants without regard to legally protected characteristics and provide reasonable accommodations upon request.

Contract and Payment Terms

• You will be engaged as an independent contractor.
• This is a fully remote role that can be completed on your own schedule.
• Projects can be extended, shortened, or concluded early depending on needs and performance.
• Your work at Mercor will not involve access to confidential or proprietary information from any employer, client, or institution.
• Payments are weekly on Stripe or Wise based on services rendered.
• Please note: We are unable to support H1-B or STEM OPT candidates at this time.

About Mercor

Mercor partners with leading AI labs and enterprises to train frontier models using human expertise. You will work on projects that focus on training and enhancing AI systems. You will be paid competitively, collaborate with leading researchers, and help shape the next generation of AI systems in your area of expertise.