The tech giant Google announced that 15 more African languages would be added to Voice Search, Gboard talk-to-type, and Translate dictation on October 28. The languages included are Chichewa, Hausa, Igbo, Kikuyu, Oromo, Rundi, Shona, Somali, South Ndebele, Swati, Tigrinya, Twi, Tswana, Nigerian Pidgin, and Yoruba.
This significant milestone will enable 300 million more Africans to interact with the web using their voices, yet it also sheds light on the massive amount of work needed to close the digital gap between Africa and the rest of the world.
The African continent is the second most populous continent in the world, with a population of over 1.34 billion people. A study published by Statista in July 2024 showed that Africa is the most multilingual continent in the world, as there are about 2,158 living languages on the continent. While about 25 percent (520) of these languages are spoken in Nigeria, 277 and 214 languages are spoken in Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, respectively. The least linguistically diverse country in Africa is Seychelles, where only four languages are spoken.
Following the announcement, Alamazan Jak, a user from Busoga, Uganda, wrote the following comment in response to the announcement in Google's translation community:
Congratulations on the exciting announcement! Expanding dictation to 13 African languages is a significant milestone. Your dedication to inclusivity and diversity is truly commendable.
However, I couldn't help but notice that Lusoga, a vital language spoken in Eastern Uganda, is not among the listed languages. As a proud speaker of Lusoga, I eagerly await its inclusion.
Could you please share any plans or timelines for adding Lusoga to Google Translate's supported languages? Your consideration would mean a great deal to the Lusoga-speaking community.
Thank you for your tireless efforts in breaking language barriers. I look forward to your response.
This comment shows that Lusoga and thousands of other African languages are still excluded, even as users are hungry for greater language representation. Lusoga (Soga) is a language spoken by over 3 million people in Uganda.
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies continue to develop and gain traction around the world, they are being integrated into many tools to automate daily tasks, in many cases making people's lives and work easier. Although the adoption of AI tools is growing in Africa every day, many users cannot access them in their languages yet. If languages like Soga are not included in the development of these tools, hundreds of millions of Africans may not benefit from the limitless opportunities offered by AI. This exclusion will further exacerbate the technology gap between Africa and the rest of the world.
The digital language barrier can impede the economic growth of many African countries by hindering speakers of Indigenous languages from accessing job opportunities and online markets. Excluding African Indigenous languages from the development of AI tools used in schools could negatively impact the education systems of many nations. Meanwhile, the use of AI in education across the continent remains as low as 12 percent.
Opportunities for language inclusion in Africa
Agriculture is the pillar of Africa’s economy. The agricultural sector is a major contributor to the GDP of many African countries. Over 43 percent of Africa’s economically active population eke out their living from farming in remote areas. However, many African smallholder farmers are facing challenges such as unpredictable weather, product insecurity, inadequate logistic infrastructure, limited access to formal financial services, limited access to digital marketplaces, economic downturns, illiteracy of many farmers, and more. The use of AI-powered digital technologies has proven effective in mitigating these challenges. However, the majority of these tools are not accessible in the farmers’ local languages.
Africa boasts many cultural heritage and diverse traditions. Language is the bedrock of these rich heritage and traditions. Languages serve as reservoirs of knowledge and traditions, but they are also the medium through which the cultural heritage of a group of people is preserved and passed from one generation to another.
Seeing the alarming rate at which languages are dying, the United Nations (UN) proclaimed a decade to protect endangered languages and preserve humanity’s common heritage in 2022. About 523 of the 3,000 dying and endangered languages that will become extinct in the world by the end of the 21st century are spoken in Africa. The exclusion of these vulnerable languages from the development of digital technologies will accelerate the threat posed by extinction.
Many African entrepreneurs, developers, and researchers have risen to the occasion, implementing initiatives that integrate African languages into technologies. A good example is a startup in Nigeria, Awarri, working on creating Nigeria’s first multilingual Large Language Model. A Kenyan startup, Code Vast, is also using AI to provide fast healthcare guidance in local Kenyan languages like Swahili, Meru, Kikuyu, and Luo. Lelapa AI is developing machine learning tools that are specifically designed for African contexts. Another Nigerian Startup, Crop2Cash, created an automated phone system technology called FarmAdvice. The AI-powered device allows smallholder farmers to access real-time, personalized agricultural knowledge and extension services in their local languages by dialing a toll-free number on any type of device, 24/7.
While all these efforts are ongoing to bridge this language gap, there is still a need to integrate more languages, especially those spoken in regions where there is no ongoing or little effort to bridge the digital divide. Tech giants such as Meta, Amazon, Uber, IBM, AWS and other organizations whose technologies are widely used in Africa need to get involved by also prioritizing the integration of minority African languages in their product development. There is a need for concerted efforts between the local startups and government bodies to create local technologies in order to reach the areas where foreign companies do not cover.