Lost in translation - How Africa is trying to close the AI language gap

Although Africa is home to a huge proportion of the world's languages – well over a quarter according to some estimates - many are missing when it comes to the development of artificial intelligence (AI).

This is both an issue of a lack of investment and readily available data.

Most AI tools, such as ChatGPT, used today are trained on English as well as other European and Chinese languages.

These have vast quantities of online text to draw from.

But as many African languages are mostly spoken rather than written down, there is a lack of text to train AI on to make it useful for speakers of those languages.

For millions across the continent this means being left out.

Farmer Kelebogile Mosime manages a 21-hectare site in Rustenburg, the heart of South Africa's platinum region.

The 45-year-old works with a small team to cultivate rows of vegetables – including beans, spinach, cauliflower and tomatoes.

She only began three years ago, with a cabbage crop, and to help she uses an app called AI-Farmer, which recognises several South African languages, including Sesotho, isiZulu and Afrikaans, to help solve various problems.

"As someone still learning to farm, you face a lot of challenges," Ms Mosime says.

"Daily, I see the benefits of being able to use my home language Setswana on the app when I run into problems on the farm, I ask anything and get a useful answer.

"For somebody in the rural areas like me who is not exposed to technology it's useful. I can ask about different options for insect control, it's also been useful with diagnosing sick plants," she beams underneath a wide-brim sunhat.