The tool might be used by itself or integrated into existing AI tools like ChatGPT and online conversational chatbots. The hope is that Vulavula, which suggests “speak” in Xitsonga, will make accessible those tools that do not currently support African languages.

The dearth of AI tools that work for African languages and recognize African names and places excludes African people from economic opportunities, says Moiloa, CEO and cofounder of Lelapa AI. For her, working to construct Africa-centric AI solutions is a option to help others in Africa harness the immense potential advantages of AI technologies. “We try to resolve real problems and put power back into the hands of our people,” she says.  

“We cannot wait for them”   

There are literally thousands of languages on this planet, 1,000 to 2,000 of them in Africa alone: it’s estimated that the continent accounts for one-third of the world’s languages. But though native speakers of English make up just 5% of the worldwide population, the language dominates the online—and has now come to dominate AI tools, too.  

Some efforts to correct this imbalance exist already. OpenAI’s GPT-4 has included minor languages like Icelandic. In February 2020, Google Translate began supporting five recent languages spoken by about 75 million people. However the translations are shallow, the tool often gets African languages unsuitable, and it’s still a great distance from an accurate digital representation of African languages, African AI researchers say.

Earlier this 12 months, for instance, the Ethiopian computer scientist Asmelash Teka Hadgu ran the identical experiments that Abbott ran with ChatGPT at a premier African AI conference in Kigali, Rwanda. When he asked the chatbot questions in his mother tongue of Tigrinya, the answers he got were gibberish. “It generated words that do not make any sense,” says Hadgu, who cofounded Lesan, a Berlin-based AI startup that’s developing translation tools for Ethiopian languages. 

Lelapa AI and Lesan are only two of the startups developing speech recognition tools for African languages. In February, Lelapa AI raised $2.5 million in seed funding, and the corporate plans for the subsequent funding round in 2025. But African entrepreneurs say they face major hurdles, including lack of funding, limited access to investors, and difficulties in training AI to learn diverse African languages. “AI receives the least funding amongst African tech startups,” says Abake Adenle, the founding father of AJALA, a  London-based startup that gives voice automation for African languages.