Africans go online to preserve local languages, fight COVID-19

The words "facemask" and "hand sanitiser" are now familiar the world over, but for isiZulu speakers in South Africa those terms did not exist a year ago, until a group of volunteers took to the internet to create them.

From Wikipedia posts in indigenous tongues to digital word libraries, African language lovers are going online to preserve and create words and content for future generations - an effort that has been given added urgency by the coronavirus pandemic.

"Language is very important, it's the tool we use to communicate our understanding of the world," said Perrymason Adams, 39, an accountant in South Africa who volunteers with WikiAfrica, a project to increase Wikipedia content in African languages.

Online access is growing rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa, with internet penetration in the region surging to 25% of the population in 2019 against less than 1% in 2000, according to the World Bank.

But research shows even Africans who can get on the web often struggle to find content they can relate to. 

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According to the World Economic Forum, one of the main reasons many Africans do not go online when they can is "lack of content in local languages".

This is a big drive behind WikiAfrica, which since it was launched by the Moleskine Foundation in 2006 has contributed more than 40,000 written entries, as well as images, audio and video files, to the widely popular online encyclopedia.

During the pandemic, translating information around social distancing, masks and sanitisers has become crucial, said Adams, who has volunteered to translate material to isiZulu and isiXhosa, another South African language.

"I knew this information could be life-saving, I felt like I was being a language activist," he said, noting that he speaks four languages at home with his family and did the isiZulu translations with his mother.

Volunteers for the WikiAfrica programme translate online content into nearly 20 African languages, including Twi, Swahili, Afrikaans and Dagbani, according to a spokeswoman from the Moleskine Foundation.

Across the world, various efforts to translate materials into African mother tongues are generating culturally relevant content while also helping keep indigenous languages alive.

To boost the spread of information in South Africa's 11 official languages, Wikimedia South Africa, a nonprofit organisation, has partnered with the Moleskine Foundation to hold "edit workshops" to teach people how to properly edit Wikipedia entries around various themes.

Learning about copyright law is an integral part of the process, said Wikimedia South Africa president Bobby Shabangu.

Reuters