Reinhard Schaler, LRC/CNGL and The Rosetta Foundation, and Tunde Adegbola, alt-i, present at GALA 2012 10th Anniversary Session.

1. Monday, 26 March 2012
16:00 – 16:40
“I’ll show you a place - High on a desert plain - Where the Streets have no name” U2
Opportunities and Growth in
AFRICA
Reinhard Schäler
LRC/CNGL University of Limerick and The Rosetta Foundation
Tunde Adegbola
African Languages Technology Initiative (Alt-i)

2. Africa is the world's second-largest and
second-most-populous continent, after Asia.
There are over 2,100 and by some counts over
3,000 languages spoken natively in Africa in
several major language families.

3. We in Africa do not want to participate in a globalized world in which we have nothing to offer.
We need to be able to speak to the world and the world needs to be able to speak to us.
Watch the video: http://bit.ly/Houjnc
Tunde Adegbola
Executive Director, African Languages Technology Initiative
Research Scientist, Consulting Engineer, Cultural Activist
with wide ranging experience in information and communication media systems
and Human Language Technologies

4. Africa The hottest Continent on Earth
The Outside The Inside The Success
Story Story Story
Three Stories about Africa

5. Africa The Outside Story
Our perceptions

6. The Dark Continent A Disaster Zone
What is our
perception here in
the rich North of
the Dark
Continent?
What comes to
our mind when
we think of
Africa?

7. The Dark Continent A Disaster Zone
Poverty
Hunger
War
Natural Disasters
Failed States
Hot
Safaris
Exotic
Great Wildlife
Nature Reserves

8. So we’d better keep them out
Europe's High-Tech African Fortress
The Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and
Melilla are politically part of Europe,
but belong geographically to Africa.
For immigrants, they represent the
few meters that separate poverty
from the chance of a new life. Ever
since refugees started scaling the
fences en masse six years ago, Spain
has used high-tech means to reinforce
its border.
Der Spiegel, 08 Oct 2011

9. Africa The Inside Story
3rd Action for Global Information Sharing AGIS ’11, Addis, Ethiopia
IDLELO 5 – Abuja, Nigeria
Meeting Africa at eye level

10. 3rd Action for Global Information Sharing
AGIS ’11
01-02 December 2011
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

12. Ethiopia
Ethiopia's population is 80 million.
Population growth rate among top ten
countries in the world.
Population to grow to over 210 million
by 2060.
90 individual languages.. 33% speak
Amharic (ca. 18m of which 15m are
monolingual), 32% Oromo.
English: most widely spoken foreign
language; medium of instruction in
secondary schools and universities.
Amharic has been replaced in many
areas by local languages such as
Oromifa and Tigrinya as the language
of primary school instruction.

13. The Dark Continent turns out to be the hottest, brightest star
Action for Global Information Sharing – AGIS ‘11

14. The Kamusi Project is a participatory international effort dedicated
to the languages of Africa. Our mission is to produce dictionaries
and other resources for African languages, and to make those
resources available everywhere to everyone. Our goal, simply
www.kamusi.org stated: Every Word in Africa.
The African Network for Localisation is run by 11 African partner
organizations who believe that ICT needs to be adapted to human
languages, including the African languages, in order to enable its use
www.africanlocalisation.net
by non-specialists.
The African Language Technology Network offers a steadily growing
collection of bibliographic resources, web links and tools, provided
by AfLaT members, including digital corpora, dictionaries and tools
www.aflat.org for many (formerly) resource-scarce African languages

16. AGIS ’11 – Framework
One-day pre-conference programme
• Visit to Addis University & Social
Enterprises
Two-day main programme
• Opened by Ethiopian Minister of IT
& Irish Ambassador
• Gala Networking Session
• 50 Main & Parallel Sessions on
business, language technologies,
mobile access, social localisation,
language policy and resources
Two-day post conference field trip
• Lalibela and surrounding area
200 Participants from Africa, Europe,
Americas
Watch the video: http://bit.ly/HcYqlM

19. Yemirhane Kristos, an ancient monastic
settlement 2,800m high up in the mountains of
northern Ethiopia.

20. AGIS ’11
There is a vibrant African language
and localisation community
• Mobile Computing &
Communication
High impact activities
• Online Ethiopian Commodity
Exchange in local languages
• African-wide UNECA-sponsored
Primary School Local Language
Projects
Great interest in collaboration and
cooperation
• Huge energy and enthusiasm
• Solutions are emerging in Africa
for the provision of a strong
communications infrastructure

21. IDLELO 5 – FOSS event,
Fantsuam Foundation
Kafanchan, Nigeria
John Dada, Programs Director
http://www.fantsuam.org/

23. Nigeria
Nigeria is a federal constitutional
republic comprising 36 states and its
Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The
three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria
are the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.
Nigeria is roughly split half and half
between Muslims and Christians with
a very small minority who practice
traditional religion. With 170m
people, it s the most populous country
in Africa, the seventh most populous
country in the world, and the most
populous country in the world in
which the majority of the population is
black. It is listed among the "Next
Eleven" economies, and is a member
of the Commonwealth of Nations.

27. What kind of television
is this?
We wanted to eradicate poverty by
giving money, but we learned very
quickly that poverty is much more
complex than this.
It all started with two 286 machines
from the U.K.
Setting up the very first CISCO
Academy in Nigeria.
See, it was about reacting to a need
that led to ….
Watch the viedo: http://bit.ly/HwNFdo

29. Back to the languages
We have languages here that are not
documented – some were
documented several years ago by
expatriates, there was not enough
indigenous input.
Language is key. I saw the power of
language. It’s critical to the work we
are doing.
Everybody things people in a region
just speak one language. Just in this
small area here, people speak 12
languages.
If I speak to people in their language I
can see the difference in the rapport
and the understanding. It’s crucial.
See the video: http://bit.ly/Hsr9Si

31. Africa The Success Story
Africa is one of the most dynamic continents on earth

32. The Hottest Continent The Future is Here
Over the past decade, six of the
world’s ten fastest-growing
countries were African.
In eight of the past ten years, Africa
has grown faster than East Asia,
including Japan.
With 600 million mobile phone
users, Africa has overtaken America
and Europe.

33. Her $3 billion fortune makes Oprah Winfrey the
wealthiest black person in America
But she is no longer the richest black person in the world. That honour now goes to Aliko Dangote, the Nigerian cement king. Critics
grumble that he is too close to the country’s soiled political class. Nonetheless his $10 billion fortune is money earned, not expropriated.
The Dangote Group started as a small trading outfit in 1977. It has become a pan- African conglomerate with interests in sugar and
logistics, as well as construction, and it is a real business, not a kleptocratic sham.

34. The sun shines brightly
Africa’s economies are consistently
growing faster than those of almost
any other region of the world.
At least a dozen have expanded by
more than 6% a year for six or more
years.
Ethiopia will grow by 7.5% this year,
without a drop of oil to export. Once a
byword for famine, it is now the
world’s tenth- largest producer of
livestock.
Africa’s GDP will grow by 900 percent,
topping out at $15 trillion by 2060 –
that’s a shade bigger than the current
GDP of the United States.
The Economist, 03 December 2011
and African Development Bank 10/2011

35. Your message – Your voice – Your language
• There is an urgent need to change our
perception about Africa and her people.
• Behind the loud noises in the western press
about corruption and war, ordinary Africans
continue to address the challenges of living in
the information age.
• Our relationship with Africa and her people
can only work at eye-level, as partners.

36. Your message – Your voice – Your language
• People in Africa are addressing the challenges
they encounter in the digital world.
• Get the message across: Demonstrate the
value of language.
• Working together, encouraging responsible &
transparent entrepreneurship, collaboration.
• Converting language “barriers” into language
opportunities.

37. It’s decision time.
The linguistically most diverse continent on the globe, the cradle
of humanity and human language, the continent with the world’s
fastest economic growth figures, is taking off.
The streets of Africa are being named – in languages most of us
have not even heard about.

38. Opportunities and
Growth in Africa
Will you join us?