From Consumers to Builders – Lanfrica’s Data Unconference Recap
On October 29, 2024, Lanfrica hosted The Lanfrica Data Unconference, a fully‑virtual gathering on Zoom designed to re‑imagine who gets to shape language technology for African and other under‑represented languages. Motivation “You don’t have to be a computer scientist to influence the technology that affects your language.” In today’s digital world, indigenous and minority languages are at […]
Empowering African Voices in AI – Lanfrica’s DLI 2024 Workshop Recap
On 6 September 2024, during the week‑long Deep Learning Indaba in Dakar, Senegal (1–7 Sept), Lanfrica co‑organised the full‑day workshop titled “Empowering African Voices in AI: Data, Models & Innovation”. The session took place at Amadou Mahtar Mbow University and formed part of the official DLI workshop track. Why this workshop mattered Although AI is transforming sectors worldwide, its benefits remain unevenly distributed; under‑resourced communities often lack […]
[Remote] Opportunities at Lanfrica Labs
Home Lanfrica Labs, with the support of The Masakhane Research Foundation, and FAIR Forward, an initiative of the German Development Cooperation (GIZ), is announcing three open positions. The internet today is made up of a rich, diverse tapestry of ideas, cultures, perspectives, opinions, and resources. Leveraging popular search engines, people access these ideas and perspectives […]
Community Engagement Curation at Lanfrica
We are excited to welcome Elizabeth Chikapa to Lanfrica as our Community Engagement Curator (CEC)! Her passion for community building, enthusiasm, skills, and dedication truly stand out and will play a pivotal role in expanding our reach and making a positive impact on the “underground communities” we aim to serve. Motivation Lanfrica is on a […]
“Data Farming” for the Global South
By Chris Emezue With the advent of AI and its ever-expanding applications, I have both witnessed and been at the forefront of fast-growing movements to harness artificial intelligence to address the unique challenges faced within the African context. This encompasses a broad spectrum of endeavors, ranging from efforts to enhance the representation of African languages […]
ActuIA Magazine Highlights Lanfrica’s Pioneering Efforts to Tackle Key Issues in AI for Africa
In the tenth issue of ActuIA magazine, founder Chris Emezue discusses Lanfrica and our data-centric and community-driven efforts to improve AI in low-resource African contexts and enable AI-driven businesses to thrive in Africa. We are honored to have our work featured in such a prestigious publication. ActuIA is a French magazine for information and promotion […]
Building language technologies for our under-represented languages
This webinar intends to discuss the question of how we can build language technologies for our minority/indigenous/endangered languages and dialects. Language is an important part of culture and so how do we ensure that artificial intelligence represents the culture of everyone in the world and not just the majority? Meet the Speakers Meet the Hosts
Lanfrica Crosses Milestone of 1000 African AI Resources🎉
In 2022, Lanfrica, following its launch, set a goal to find and link at least 1000 African language resources. We are pleased to announce that on the last day of 2022, we achieved this milestone, and are now providing access to more than 1000 African resources on our platform. This achievement is a testament to […]
African Carpentries Community meetup with Lanfrica
Lanfrica and the problems facing the advancement of technologies for African languages On Thursday, August 11 2022, at 7:00 a.m. UTC, Lanfrica presented at the CarpentryCon 2022 event, hosted by The African Carpentries Community. About the talk Africa is one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world – a continent rich in languages […]
Fon Language Highlight
The Fon language is spoken by about 1.7-2 million people. With very few related resources available online, it is one of the truly low-resourced African languages, which still needs attention despite its rich and dense morphology. Summary of the language Fon is an African language spoken by the Fon people, mostly living in the center […]
