Ghanaian Wikimedia Languages Meetup 2023 (Sir Amugi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Rising Voices note: Our monthly newsletter provides a summary of our recent blog posts about all aspects of digital inclusion including access to and adoption of digital tools, as well as different ways and opportunities for communities to fully participate online. Read here for previous editions of this newsletter.

Hello, readers!  How are you doing this September?

In the opening of this issue, we’d love to give a bit of a shout-out to this mini conference on languages that took place in Ghana earlier this year.  It was an event hosted by the Ghanaian Wikimedia Language Communities, which comprised of Wikimedians from nine User Groups — including that for the Dagaare, Dagbani, Ewe, Fante, Ghanaian Pidgin, Gurene, Kusaal, Moore, and Twi languages.  It was not only a language meetup but also an event for people of a shared passion to talk about progress made, challenges encountered, as well as projects as planned for the future in mitigating the digital divide due to language barriers.

Rising Voices was honored to be part of this event and is looking forward to connecting with language digital activists around the world through similar events!

Interested in learning first hand about how the internet and technology play a role in the promotion and revitalization of Indigenous, minority, endangered, or under-resourced languages? Rising Voices and partners are now bringing to you a new round of our rotating Twitter campaigns for 2023, featuring language digital activists around the world each week. Come follow us and hear what they have to share!

@ActLenguas (Latin America)

• Nicaela León [es]: a Quechua speaking linguist from Bolivia and co-founder to the Proyecto Atuq Yachachiq, aiming to promote literary/didactic material in Quechua for the language to stay relevant in today’s world and to the younger generations

@DigiAfricanLang (Africa)

• Lucy Chinyeaka Iwuala: an Igbo-speaking language activist based in Nigeria, who’s passionate about the digitalization of indigenous languages through Wikimedia projects
• Surajo Teete: a Fulfulde activist from Nigeria, who founded a news outlet in his language as a way to keep it alive in the digital world
• Adéṣínà Ayẹni: a multi-talented advocate for Yorùbá cultural heritage, as well as translation manager for Global Voices in the language, whose dream is for every Yorùbá child to know their own language
• Mikaeel Sodiq Adesina: a Nigeria-based language activist, who’s been contributing for Yoruba Wikipedia and hopes for his people to not shy away from using their language in the digital space

Along this line, we’d love to take our readers to Australia for two stories related to the PULiiMA Indigenous Languages and Technology Conference, a biennial event that has just concluded in August, where people come together to explore ideas and means that can help advance community-based projects on Indigenous languages.
→ “Bridging generations: Bininj Kunwok Centre blends tech and tradition for language”
→ “Preserving Australia's Indigenous cultural intellectual property in digital storytelling”

And we’d love for you to know about the story of the Amazigh language: from civic participation impeded by language insecurity, people’s fight for equal opportunities, to the role digital tools played in the shifting of its status.
→ “Morocco's Amazigh pursue civic presence through linguistic rights”

Are you a Yorùbá-speaker who doubles as a tech lover?  We’ve discovered a YouTube channel that might just be your cup of tea!  In this channel called Tech in Yorùbá, with 51 videos, data scientist/technical instructor Wuraola Oyewusi has covered tech concepts from computing and cyber security to data science and AI.  Would you check it out and let us know what you think?

• Forward Ho: Meet the Odisha activist who's on a language identity quest via The New Indian Express
• Why African journalists use podcasting to tell stories via jamlab (the Journalism and Media Lab)

Subscribe to the Rising Voices Newsletter