In a strong bid to bridge the digital divide and realize an inclusive Africa, top global telecommunications company Orange, has unveiled an innovative initiative that will promote African languages in the field of new technologies.
Taking into account the linguistic diversity of the continent, with more than 2,000 languages spoken, Orange is collaborating with AI leaders OpenAI and Meta for a co-design of their open-source AI models to make them capable of understanding and interpreting the regional African languages that are underrepresented in state of the art AI systems.
This ambitious initiative will start on from the first semester of 2025 and the first phase will concentrate on the inclusion of Wolof and Pulaar in the program and course content that are spoken by about 22 million speakers in West Africa.
Using OpenAI’s ‘Whisper’ speech model and Meta’s ‘Llama’ large language model, Orange wants to create custom AI models, which will allow clients to chat naturally, in their local language to access services like customer support and sales.
This long-term view of Orange goes beyond the initial languages and is a cornerstone of Orange’s objective to eventually be able to recognise all African languages spoken across its 18-country Middle East and Africa region footprint. This move confronts the problem of linguistic exclusion, which currently renders AI mostly inaccessible and disadvantageous for millions of Africans who speak and operate in their mother-tongues.
One of the core principles of Orange is the promise of providing open access to the project. The fine-tuned AI models will be made available with a free license for non-commercial uses to facilitate their uptake in the important area, such as public health and education.
This will allow local organizations, NGOs, and startups to produce customized innovative solutions to the linguistic contexts of their communities.
Orange Middle East and Africa’s Deputy CEO Brelotte Ba said this move was significant for achieving digital inclusion, saying, “Our belief is technology that makes sense for everyone, not just who’s most able to afford it.”
He demonstrated with an example of a voice-activated system that would allow user to do financial dealing by speaking in their local language.
Orange is a bravura move which experts say is critical for making sure that the AI revolution yields fair dividends across Africa. By giving a priority to the incorporation of African languages, Orange is not only doing value addition to its services but also promoting innovation, cultural heritage and giving a voice to the less privileged in the digital life.
This project stands as a powerful example of how technology can be utilized to drive inclusivity and connect languages worldwide.
