Andile Ngcaba advocates for the development of African languages
Andile Ngcaba advocates for the development of African languages
Andile Ngcaba, founder and Chairman of Convergence Partners, at the World Bank’s Infodev Fifth Global Forum on Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship in East London, South Africa, discussed how development of software and applications in African languages to drive innovation in Africa.
“One fundamental issue that makes it very difficult for us to build and develop software today is language,” said Ngcaba, who added that until the language issue within the African continent is dealt with, “the way in which we engage with the internet is going to still create inhibitors on how we build systems for the future”.
According to Ngcaba, Africa is a continent of more than 2,000 languages, it is important to develop code our indigenous languages. He called for the development of human language technology infrastructure in African languages to support the large-scale broadband infrastructure that is being deployed across the Continent.
“Unless we build underlying engines that address our respective languages, our penetration on the internet from a language point of view will be minimal. All the infrastructure we have built will not be able to reach as many people as possible.”