A world where Africans can communicate and access information through the internet, in their own indigenous languages.
Enable Sustainable African solution to African multilingualism and diversity for development issues
Advance African Indigenous Language Technology & Applications knowledge in the global knowledge space,
Build African capacity for African Indigenous Language Technology & Applications Education, Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
Enable ethical research and innovation, informed and driven by diversity-aware unitary data about language, knowledge, and human behaviour, as a step towards a better and more inclusive society
Speak to an African, it goes into his head, speak to him in his own language, it goes into his heart. African Indigenous Languages (AfrlLs) are vehicles of African cultures, collective memory and values, as well as an essential component of African identities. Also, AfrILs are a building block of African diversity and living heritage, that offer windows to the souls of the African peoples, their unique indigenous knowledge systems, and cultural identities. They are reservoirs in which are stored, most of the African cultural wealth, including their philosophies of life, stories, medicinal practices, and so on. By their nature, AfrILs are lyrical and poetic and most importantly, they carry the weights of the rich cultural history of the African peoples with ease. Consequently, the death of any of the AfrlLs is like a burnt library! Such a loss has socio-psychological effects of the loss of people’s cultural identity, harbouring of socio-cultural inferiority complex, and second-class citizenship syndrome, as well as second fiddle playing in the global knowledge advancement space. In this digital era, AfrlLs are faced with a unique challenge of digital language exclusion, in the internet space. The digital era is driven by a fast-changing technological revolution, with all the threats and opportunities it presents. A key threat is the danger of extinction of any African language not on the digital space. Therefore, it becomes imperative, to safeguard African linguistic and cultural diversity, and promote African multilingualism in the digital space, through effective exploitation of Information and Communication Technologies. This is towards a world where all Africans can communicate and access information through the internet, in their own indigenous languages.
Knowledge should:
properly record the diversity of the world, as we see it, in time and space, as well as the many diverse representations of the world itself, as they result from the local culture, needs and purpose;
be written in the local language, and it should record those facts that are locally relevant with the format and values which are most appropriate; and;
enable the coordination of the local manifestations of diversity, thus allowing for the construction of progressively more unitary representations of the world.