African Languages and the World of IT

In a bit of tech-nerd glocal news, Afrigen and the ANLoc are hard at work making the web accessible for hundreds of different African languages and locales. Why is this important? I will let them explain it:

The first step for any localization project is to ensure that all users and computer systems can identify underlying language and country parameters. A locale is a master file that can be used across applications to specify meta-data for each language/ country pair. Data include language information such as how to express dates and Unicode font support, as well as country information such as currency names and symbols. When a locale is implemented properly, documents can be identified by language of origin, facilitating features such as search, spell-checking, and application-specific user options. Having a completed locale for a language is fundamental for the success of all future localization activities for that language.

On the ANLoc website, they write:

ICT is necessarily adapted to human languages in order to enable its use by non-specialists. For historic and economic reasons, however, certain languages dominate in this role, regardless of where ICT is used. So, when technology is used where the language and culture are different, it will exert an unintentional influence on the latter that could be negative. Localisation – the adaptation of ICT to the language and culture where it is used – allows that cultural pressure to be reduced, eliminated or even reversed. By addressing the issue of localisation this network and its sub-projects aim to address these dimensions to indeed turn ICTs into a positive force for all of the above dimensions.

In other words, they aim to make the web more multilingually friendly, especially for speakers of languages like Kikuyu, Zulu, dialects of Berber, Amharic etc. Of course this raises the question of whether these languages are actually being utilized to any great degree in cyberspace at present, and if so, is there a demand for them emanating from somewhere? I suspect of the languages I listed that there is in Amharic, but to what degree in the other languages? How will online interaction 'change' these languages, many of which are primarily oral to begin with? All in all, this is a great and overdue effort to make the global more local.

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The East African Fibre Summit

Nairobi, September 22-23, 2009

East Africa is on the eve on a communications revolution, which will be brought about by the landing of the region’s first undersea cables to the outside world in 2009. Governments and corporate users in the region need to prepare for the transition from a predominantly satellite-based communications infrastructure to a fibre cable-based communications infrastructure.

There is also an urgent need for new approaches to financing and building out information and communication infrastructure to address large unmet demand for information and communication services. Technological innovation helps make these new approaches possible and more flexible approaches to financing, service delivery and regulation will make them effective and sustainable.

The East African Fibre Summit will provide a platform for all stakeholders to assess these exciting developments, the impact they will have on their organizations and the optimum technical implementation strategies to gain maximum benefit from the opportunities they represent.

It will provide practical business and technology briefings to empower resellers, service providers and users to maximise their returns on their existing investments in satellite technologies and how to extend their ROI over the transition period, with blended communication systems as fibre comes on stream. Hybrid systems will be the order of the day, with wireless broadband and VoIP also boosted substantially as available bandwidth multiplies dramatically over the coming years. Satellite and wireless technologies will still have a role to play providing both data and VoIP services to business, residential, government and developmental users in both rural and urban
settings.

The East African Fibre Summit will provide participants with answers to crucial technical and business questions, enabling them to make the right deployment decisions at a time when 3G technologies are making an increasing impact in the region, ahead of the new fibre era. By providing a platform for regulators, policy-makers, vendors, service providers and users to network and share knowledge, the Conference will act as a catalyst to stimulate take-up of the right technologies to multiply connectivity across East Africa.

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