How Open Source is Powering the Future of African NLP
Open source isn’t just about free software; it’s a movement built on sharing, openness, and collaboration. Across Africa, people are coming together to build language technology that includes everyone. In African Natural Language Processing (NLP), open-source projects are the driving force behind this movement. They’ve already helped bring over 2,000 local languages online. This work […]
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2024: Transforming Lives & Industries In Africa.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t just a trendy buzzword anymore; it’s starting to really change our world in some big ways. In Africa, a continent full of diversity and potential, AI is making waves in areas like farming, healthcare, governance, and economic growth. But just like any new tech, there are both benefits and challenges to […]
Lanfrica Shines at MozFest Zambia 2024 — NaijaVoices Wins Data Futures Showcase
Lusaka, Zambia — 20 November 2024 — Lanfrica proudly announces that its flagship community project NaijaVoices was crowned winner of the Data Futures Showcase at Mozilla Festival (MozFest) Zambia 2024, a gathering that celebrates African innovators who are “flipping the script” on data ownership and cultural preservation. Spotlight on the Data Futures Showcase MozFest’s Data Futures Showcase highlights builders around […]
Why Linguistic Collaboration Is Important In Advancing NLP Tools in Africa
Understanding a language and how its native speakers speak it requires more than just knowing the words and their meanings. It involves understanding the context, nuances, and cultural aspects that give the language its depth. When we want a machine to “speak” or “understand” a language, it needs to appreciate the elements of phonology, morphology, […]
Improving Discoverability and Impact of African Resources
Technology has come a long way, and amazing inventions are coming up every day. Today, people have virtual assistants on their phones and can ask them whatever they want. Your car’s navigation system can provide you with a set of instructions to guide your way. But what if these solutions were in a language you […]
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 […]
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 […]
We Ain’t Just Cooking Jollof Rice, We Are Building AfricaNLP
There is more to Africa than the varieties of Jollof Rice delicacies or the melodious and vibeable tunes of Afrobeats. There are African languages! With the rise of Natural Language Processing, attention has been heavily placed on western languages with several discoveries and advancements that make these languages highly resourced. However, one may ask or […]
Urhobo Language Highlight
The Urhobo language, spoken by about 2 million people, is not getting enough attention like other African languages – despite its rich vocabulary. Summary of the language Urhobo is an African language spoken by the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria — from the region of Delta and Bayelsa State. Read more about Urhobo. Highlight of Efforts […]