  Recent advances in speech synthesis have enabled many useful applications
like audio directions in Google Maps, screen readers, and automated content
generation on platforms like TikTok. However, these systems are mostly
dominated by voices sourced from data-rich geographies with personas
representative of their source data. Although 3000 of the world's languages are
domiciled in Africa, African voices and personas are under-represented in these
systems. As speech synthesis becomes increasingly democratized, it is desirable
to increase the representation of African English accents. We present Afro-TTS,
the first pan-African accented English speech synthesis system able to generate
speech in 86 African accents, with 1000 personas representing the rich
phonological diversity across the continent for downstream application in
Education, Public Health, and Automated Content Creation. Speaker interpolation
retains naturalness and accentedness, enabling the creation of new voices.
