September 01, 2023

Does your language have a digital future?

21 minutes

We speak hundreds of languages across the African continent.

But only a small number are represented on the internet.

So what future do the languages we speak at home and with our families have, if we cannot use them in a digital world?

This is where machine learning comes in, Artificial Intelligence. Because there are translation tools out there, built through Natural Language Processing (NLP), which can allow you to be understood anywhere in the world. But the data needed is complex and takes a long time to create.

So we brought together 3 women who work in this field and are ‘language champions’ for African languages – Salomey Osei from Ghana, Jade Abbott from South Africa, and Kathleen Siminyu from Kenya – to find out whether our African languages can have a digital future.

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