Beyond English: Rebuilding AI for Africa’s Languages
Africa is home to more than a quarter of the world’s languages, yet most are largely absent from artificial intelligence development. Many are primarily spoken rather than written, leaving little digital text for AI to learn from. As a result, millions of people are excluded from tools dominated by English, European, and Chinese languages.
Local linguists and computer scientists are now addressing this gap, adapting open-source models to understand languages such as Yoruba, Zulu, Hausa, Swahili, and Amharic. The African Next Voices project has created AI-ready datasets in 18 languages, recording 9,000 hours of speech across Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. The recordings capture everyday life in markets, farms, taxis, and classrooms, reflecting how people actually speak. Voices were gathered from different regions, ages, and backgrounds to ensure inclusivity. Funded by a $2.2 million Gates Foundation grant, the dataset will be open access, enabling developers to build tools that translate, transcribe, and respond in local languages.
The incorporation of indigenous languages in AI is already helping tackle practical problems in Africa. Farmer Kelebogile Mosime in Rustenburg, South Africa, uses the app AI-Farmer in her home language, Setswana, to diagnose plant diseases and manage crops. Startups like Lelapa AI are developing AI tools in African languages for banks and telecoms firms, making essential services more accessible. These initiatives go beyond convenience. “Language is access to imagination,” says Prof. Vukosi Marivate of the University of Pretoria. “It’s not just words ? it’s history, culture, knowledge. If indigenous languages aren’t included, we lose more than data; we lose ways of seeing and understanding the world.”
By building AI in African languages, the continent is expanding access while preserving culture, heritage, and the voices of communities often left out of technology.
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1. Who is working to include African languages in AI development?
2. What languages are being incorporated into AI tools through local initiatives?
3. Why are African languages often missing from artificial intelligence systems?
4. How is AI in local languages helping people like farmer Kelebogile Mosime?
1. If you can create an AI tool, what language would you choose to focus on?
2. Should technology include local languages, how would it make life easier for you?
3. Why would preserving your language and culture in AI be important to you?
4. What do you think about using AI in local community in Africa?
Africa is home to more than a quarter of the world’s languages, yet most are largely absent from artificial intelligence development. Many are primarily spoken rather than written, leaving little digital text for AI to learn from. As a result, millions of people are excluded from tools dominated by English, European, and Chinese languages.
