Hiring the next generation of leadership for African Languages: jobs.au.int/job/Executiv...

🗣️ “There are a billion and half people speaking in Africa and they have… | CLEAR Global 🗣️ “There are a billion and half people speaking in Africa and they have almost nothing for their own languages, although those are the languages they use every day.” Martin Benjamin joins Aimee Ansa...

The view of African languages from low-Earth orbit:

www.linkedin.com/posts/clear-...

This is TODAY - still 4 hours to register.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Feb 28, 2025 02:00 PM Nairobi

zoom.us/meeting/regi...

The language technology platform for Africa that ACALAN is questing to implement, being revealed at the UNESCO #LT4all conference (Language Technology for All) in Paris.

#indigenouslanguages

Experts and stakeholders from around the world are meeting in Paris today regarding Language Technology for the billions who speak languages other than the usual suspects.

Today's program at UNESCO #LT4all conference
www.lt4all2025.eu/full-program...

#indigenouslanguages

Recalling this rather glowing BBC piece from a few years back: www.bbc.com/news/technol.... Tech jobs in Africa are great when they have concern for fairness and well being, not when they are the cheapest way to extract max human labor.

kamu.si/introducing-kamfupi - I hope we're better in Nairobi!!

Aimee Ansari on LinkedIn: What’s Interesting in Low-Resource Language Tech: Nwulite Obodo Open Data… Data licensing doesn't sound interesting, but I could do a whole series on just this! Here's a really interesting initiative from the Data Science Law Lab…

🤔 What’s Interesting in Low-Resource Language Tech? Aimee Ansari discusses Nwulite Obodo Open Data License, a license for sharing African language datasets. Developed by Data Science Law Lab at the University of Pretoria, with others in South Africa and Kenya.
www.linkedin.com/posts/aimee-...

CLEAR Global on LinkedIn: #languageinclusion #lowresourcetech 🚀 What’s Interesting in Low-Resource Language Tech? 🤔 Welcome to our newest monthly series where we showcase recent advancements and insights into…

Cheetah, an open-source toolkit developed by UBC-NLP, focusing on Natural Language Processing for African languages. Cheetah works *experimentally* in 517 African languages, a step on the road toward equitable NLP for non-lucrative languages.

www.linkedin.com/posts/clear-...

Harnessing power of language, tech to boost SME digital trade Looking at the digital technologies powering e-commerce in the 21st century, one might be led to assume that a handful of global languages suffice for trade and communication.

Business Daily Africa: Harnessing power of language, tech to boost SME digital trade

kamu.si/language-tec...

The African Languages group on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/groups/46760...

Country Grid - Languages in Africa

Mostly for Africans...
Are you positioned to go through the language list for your country and find errors in what is included?
Languages might be
• missing
• double-listed with alternate names
• listed with an alternate name instead of the primary
• not a local mother tongue
kamu.si/country-grid...

Workers at a construction site in Kigali, Rwanda, carrying loads of cement on their heads, October 2010

Tanzania has a population of 62,000,000.
0.09 dental personnel per 10,000 people.
That is, about 1 dentist for every 6 million people.
My first thought on looking up the stat was, "It can't be THAT bad, can it?"

Country Grid - Languages in Africa

A first attempt to list every language spoken in Africa, per country. Please be brutal in finding things to fix!

kamu.si/country-grid...

Courtesy of an ACALAN language and technology expert on our Committee for African Languages in Cyberspace...

The Kam4D matrix will sit as the data core of the comprehensive and interactive platform that ACALAN has planned for African languages, for which we are currently mobilizing resources.

We are proud to endorse and participate in the upcoming Language Technology for All conference, 24 - 26 February.

Advancing Humanism through Language Technologies
Paris, UNESCO Headquarters

www.lt4all2025.eu
www.lt4all2025.eu/endorsers

#lt4all2025

The Power of Languages Today, we held a unique event exploring the power of languages and our progress towards a universal translator. We introduced Lara, the world's best translation AI, along with new tools to support tra...

A "universal translator" that ignores African languages is not "universal" - it excludes 1.5 billion people from view.

"Lara's error rate is just 2.4 per thousand words" does not apply to African languages, where the error rate is 1000/1000 words.

translated.com/the-power-of...

Most linguistic data for most African languages has not been digitized in any meaningful way. Yet most of the tiny attention - research and funding - to digital tools for African languages is fixated on AI

If LLMs bug out for languages with large language data, what happens where the data is small?

Welcome to ACALAN on BlueSky. We look forward to discussions regarding African languages!