US Fintech Invest in African Language Chatbot with Microsoft

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 mobile applications for SMEs in emerging markets

The multilingual chatbot will be available to African language speakers via Ovamba’s mobile app, Ovamba Plus.

The goal is to help SMEs in Africa access banking and finance solutions, something they have had limited access to due to language reasons such as not being able to speak the main colonial languages of French, English or Arabic.

“Business training and formal education is a luxury not afforded to some members of Africa’s entrepreneurial sector, and is often taught in western languages,” says Prashant Mahajan, Ovamba’s CTO. “We can help them to sustain growth by delivering business support and training in the language that they are most used to”.

Yet another step in the right direction of empowering Africans through African languages!