Sharafdin Yusuf
Somali language work for AI at Goobo Labs.
Sharafdin Yusuf is a self-taught builder. He started teaching himself young, and he always preferred that over a formal academic path. Most of his background is mathematics and physics, learned on his own. The same habit later took him into programming and open source.
He began coding at age 12, became a tech mentor by 16, created Soplang at 17, and built a custom Debian-based operating system by 18. After that he kept shipping open-source work across systems, developer tools, blockchain, security, and infrastructure.
Today he focuses on AI research for the Somali language at Goobo Labs, an open research lab building the foundations of Somali AI. The work includes programming in Somali (Soplang), localized systems (nabadOS), language standards (Somali Language Standard), and NLP datasets (SomNLP-Corpus).
He also keeps studying astrophysics, gemology, and the core sciences on his own. Mathematics and physics are still what he cares about most. That interest started outside school and never really stopped.
Core contributions
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Open source: He publishes open-source projects on GitHub.
Somali language infrastructure
- Soplang: A Somali programming language.
- nabadOS: A developer-first, Somali-localized Linux distribution.
- Somali Language Standard: An open, machine-readable standard for Somali orthography, grammar, terminology, and AI resources.
- SomNLP-Corpus: An open Somali text corpus for NLP and LLM research.
- hanticoin-go: Blockchain core for Hanticoin, a Proof-of-Stake Layer-1 for payments in Somalia.
- Memvid: A memory layer for AI agents.
- YoAuditor: An LLM-powered code auditor built in Rust.
- Writing: He writes plain-language articles, including on Milicsi.
- Science: He still studies mathematics and physics on his own, along with chemistry, biology, astrophysics, and gemology. In August 2021 he reached an independent astrophysics milestone through his own observation and study.
- Mentorship: At Goobo Labs he mentors and teaches data science and machine learning bootcamps, including Python, DS/ML, and NLP, for Somali AI developers.
He still trusts self-study more than classroom paths. He also wants modern AI for every language, and he thinks Somali gets there with open datasets, open standards, and open education.