Youth behind revival of Africa’s mother tongues

African languages once pushed to the margins by decades of colonialism are enjoying a renaissance that is also creating business opportunities, reports TimesLIVE. Africa is home to more than 1bn people speaking roughly a third of the world’s languages, with between 1 500 and 3 000 across 54 countries, according to Unesco. Experts say the revival in some of them is driven in part by second- and third-generation Africans in the diaspora finding it easier to reconnect with their roots and communicate with older relatives, thanks to social media, online learning and entertainment. Governments and international organisations are trying to reverse the marginalisation of indigenous languages. The African Union’s 2022 decision to adopt Kiswahili, spoken in much of East Africa, as an official working language has raised its international profile. The UN declared 2022-32 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. And the AU continental body and Unesco are supporting efforts to document and revitalise African languages, including the use of artificial intelligence to generate and translate children’s books and teacher guides. But there’s a steep digital disadvantage. Unesco says only 10 languages worldwide dominate the ‘internet ecosystem’, while less than 2% of African languages have a meaningful online presence. That leaves many with too little data to train artificial intelligence systems. Still, momentum for change is growing, with much of it coming from Africans abroad.

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