{"id":1076,"date":"2022-04-07T10:27:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T10:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lanfrica.com\/blog\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2025-05-14T17:46:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T17:46:02","slug":"lanfrica-language-highlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lanfrica.com\/blog\/lanfrica-language-highlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Lanfrica Language Highlight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lanfrica <\/a>Language Highlight is about creating awareness on the not-so-popular African languages. While there are admirable efforts towards representing African languages in technology, these efforts are unequal: with some African languages receiving a lot of attention \u2013 like Swahili (swh<\/code>), and Yoruba (yor<\/code>) \u2013 while others have far less. See for yourself in the image below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Number of Lanfrica records per language (using ISO 639-3<\/a> language code) as at 7th April, 2022.
Note: you might need to ri<\/em>ght-click Open image in New Tab<\/code> in order to zoom in and view the image better<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The image above shows the number of records currently (7th April, 2022) linked in Lanfrica \u2013 which includes research papers, datasets, models, media, etc. \u2013 for all the African languages. While we still have more curating to do, one can immediately see the uneven spread of attention given to African languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Lanfrica Language Highlight, we concentrate on the languages with low attention (count between 0 and 5). For these languages, we conduct a targeted effort to find existing records on the web. We find major people\/organizations working on that language, link their resources<\/strong>, interview them (if possible) and release a blog about our efforts. In this way, we hope to accomplish two goals:<\/p>\n\n\n\n