The software industry offers big opportunities for African countries. It opens up access to important technologies that benefit the continent, but also constitutes an area where Africa can contribute and generate innovation-led business opportunities. Recent developments in mobile technologies on the continent have opened up new avenues for innovation and software development, especially in local languages. Both foreign and local companies are developing new applications in finance and banking, health agriculture, education, and more, aimed at tackling the challenges faced by the population on the continent.
Africa is home to about 2,000 languages, equivalent to one-third of the world’s living languages. This asset has been distorted into a threat to national unity and cited to justify the use of the past colonial language as the primary medium of instruction and governance. The development of any nation today depends on the level and quality of producing, accessing, and disseminating local knowledge and technologies. Unfortunately, in most African countries foreign sources of knowledge and information are dominant and mastered by only a minority that can access this foreign language.
Based on the above, and in reaffirming the role of African universities and research institutions in the information and knowledge society, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) created the Academia Research Network on African Language and Content Development to computerize and promote African languages in cyberspace. The network is currently developing a model for Rural Electronic Schools in African Languages (ERELA) in Cameroon, in collaboration with the National Association of Cameroonian Languages Committee (NACALCO). More.
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Netherlands
Local time: 13:47
Dutch to English
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It is a wonderful and praiseworthy initiative to foster the online presence of African languages, for sure. We all love the riches of our native languages and are thrilled to enjoy an online community in which to reinforce our culture. But is it realistic to aspire to a future Africa (or any other continent) in which ‘foreign’ languages (i.e., languages of global importance) are no longer dominant in commerce, innovation and technology? Asian and Latin American countries, even those with the profoundest poverty and/or the friendliest government attitudes to their own national minority languages, have not taken such an approach but have rather redoubled their efforts to have the population comfortable with manipulating online content, and knowledge more generally, in major world languages. Estonia, Georgia, Bolivia, Mongolia, India, the Republic of Korea, or Malaysia would be good role models here for how nations can massively boost their citizens' online presence (largely in English when it comes to commerce and technology) without losing any of their skill or pride in their own languages.
South Africa
Local time: 13:47
Japanese to English
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I'm an African person, but don't speak any African languages because my parents chose not to teach me any - primarily because they struggled so hard to learn English that they felt we would have better opportunities in life if we just learnt it right of the bat. Obviously theirs also improved by speaking to us in English all the time!
However, I think this is more about not neglecting market that is left behind simply because they are not as familiar with the language. English is widely spoken in some countries, but accessibility and lack of access to education means that there are pockets (usually outside urban areas) of countries that are predominantly non-English speaking. The advent of mobile technology means that these populations still may have access to the internet, but are not catered for in terms of content. Having online presence in English is great when appealing to a global audience, but sometimes you want to appeal to a more localised audience, and I believe this is the drive here - after all, a site can be multilingual, but the languages chosen should reflect the target audiences that they are intended for.
Netherlands
Local time: 13:47
Dutch to English
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Thanks — youʼve explained it rather more clearly than the original GALA press release did!
Alex
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