The African Language Solutions Blog

According to the BBC, who launched a radio service of English-based pidgin for West and Central Africa, a year ago – the language is “thriving”. “News Pidgin” now reaches a weekly audience of 7.5 million people in Nigeria and around the world on radio, online, Facebook and Instagram. Even though pidgin is not an official language or even recognised…

According to a letter published on the BBC news website, Nigerian soldiers are now expected to learn local languages in order to improve relations with the population and mend bridges. The editor-in-chief of Nigeria’s Daily Trust newspaper, Mannir Dan Ali, in his article highlights that the new regulation gives serving soldiers one year to learn…

Ovamba, a Fintech company, has announced that is partnering with Microsoft to create “the first African language driven chatbot designed to serve the millions of African SMEs who face exclusion from financial services due to the challenges of functional and business literacy”. Ovamba is a US-founded fintech company that focuses that develops online platforms and…

The BBC is on a roll when it comes to African languages! Its has now announced it is adding even more languages to its news service in Africa, this time to attract users from Ethiopia and Eritrea. The latest localization move see the launch of three news websites in Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language, Afaan Oromo,…

The BBC has announced that it will launch 11 new language services in 2017 as part of an expansion project – 7 of the languages are African! The new languages are Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Tigrinya, Igbo, Yoruba and Nigerian Pidgin. This is great and exciting news for the development of African languages. Why these African…

Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has announced that he has given the go-ahead for the process to start on examining how to implement the teaching of French in the Ghanaian education system, from primary to senior high school education levels. “We’ll want to make French a compulsory language in our schools right until the…

Believe it or not, but Lingala has now joined the many languages spoken on the pitches and during the matches of the English Premier League (EPL)! The recent move of Yannick Bolasie to Everton FC has seen him team up with Romelu Lukaku. The former Crystal Palace man has revealed in an interview with the…

Facebook’s Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, arrived in Nigeria this week praising Nigerian talent as well as promising more African, and specifically Nigerian, languages on Facebook. On his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa, Zuckerberg has shone a bright light on the country’s tech and digital innovations. His first visit in Lagos was the Co-creation Hub Nigeria (CcHUB) in Yaba,…

Facebook’s march into Africa continues this time launching translations in the Hausa language further closing its digital grasp on Africans the continent over. Negativity aside, the move is a great boost for the Hausa language and especially Hausa translations. We are sure readers will agree that languages need to embrace the digital age to ensure…

The Kenyan government has given Kiswahili translation services a massive injection of hope as it has launched a new language policy which includes compulsory translations for official documents. On June 21, 2016, Kenyan media broke the news that the government has launched the language policy as part of a wider plan of creating social cohesion. State-run…