Article by Damilare Dosunmu: “If you speak to an artificial-intelligence bot in an African language, it will most likely not understand you. If it does manage to muster a response, it will be rife with errors. This is an existential problem with AI that everybody in Africa is trying to solve. Now, Google has joined the cause.
On February 3, Google launched WAXAL, a data set for 21 African languages, including Acholi, Hausa, Luganda, and Yoruba.
“Taking its name from the Wolof word for ‘speak,’ this dataset was developed over three years to empower researchers and drive the development of inclusive technology across Africa,” Google said in a blogpost.
While WAXAL will make building AI products that understand African languages easier, it represents a rare move toward digital sovereignty: The data set is owned by African partners who worked on the project, and not Google.
“WAXAL is a collaborative achievement, powered by the expertise of leading African organizations who were essential partners in the creation of this dataset,” Google said. “This framework ensures our partners retain ownership of the data they collected, while working with us toward the shared goal of making these resources available to the global research community.”
Google’s African partners for this project include Makerere University in Uganda, the University of Ghana, AI and open data company Digital Umuganda in Rwanda, and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, among others…(More)”.
