Interview with Francis Egbokhare, African Languages Technology initiative (ALTI) of Nigeria

ALTI won second place in the 2003 AISI IICD Local Content Applications Award. This prize recognizes innovative features that apply ICT to the local context. iConnect Africa talked to Francis Egbokhare on ALTI activities in general and the significance of the award in particular.

iConnect Africa: What does winning the IICD Local Content Prize mean to you personally and professionally?

FE: Personally, it is a great recognition and I am delighted. It is an important leverage and an opportunity to add my voice towards influencing the development of African languages and promoting a positive attitude towards technology and ICT. Professionally, it is a confirmation of the validity of a new thinking towards multi-disciplinary interfacing, engaging of ICT, adopting and localizing technology. The award provides the encouragement to continue to move in this direction for the benefit of African languages, cultures and peoples. And for the African Languages Technology Initiative and the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Ibadan, it is a great beginning and a good recommendation.

iConnect Africa: What are your views with respect to the preservation of African languages in the information society?

FE: There are over 2,000 languages in Africa. This is a third of all the languages in the world. Within the next one hundred years or less, over 90% of them and their accompanying cultures, folk wisdom, medical practices, fauna, verbal arts, etc. will be gone. Language is a huge resource, an encyclopaedia, a library of sorts. Language is our window to the world, it is related and connected to everything. The loss of the least language is a tragic loss to humanity. It is imperative for us to take the preservation and transmission of languages seriously. ICT provides us with an opportunity to tackle the problems of endangerment and language death pragmatically and cost effectively. Technology provides us with an opportunity to move from 'communication babel' to ‘linguistic Pentecost'. ICT provides the bridge between languages, the gateway between cultures and the network between minds. We must however engage it, adapt and deploy it.

iConnect Africa: Could you describe the significance of the Yoruba keyboard? How will it help advance use of ICTs in Nigeria?

FE: It is significant in two respects. First, it helps to nativise technology. Its greatest impact is that technology will no longer be seen as belonging to foreign cultures and peoples. In this sense, it will influence the thinking process and attitude to technology. Second, it will increase the sense of pride and value in local languages and cultures and thus help to preserve them. ICT becomes something that can be owned and appropriated. Third, it will enable Nigerians, especially over forty million Yoruba people engage in the Global Information Infrastructure. This innovation has a potential for redefining literacy since one can be literate only in Yoruba and still have access to the GII.