How do you market your skills, keep up with industry trends, and exceed client expectations? Join our conversation with a panel of established African language professionals as they share inspiring stories and talk about their experiences in the language industry. In this toolbox session, we will dive deep into a wide range of topics relevant to African linguists including marketing, business acumen, community building, training and accreditation, and much more. Takeaways: Attendees will learn from African language professionals on how to set up shop, how to market their services, and what clients are looking for.

Book Now:

Industry veterans (and a newbie) of the language services sector in Africa will be featured in this round table session. The discussion will include best practices needed to establish and maintain operations in the African market, day-to-day processes, recruitment and training, sales, and growth strategies. Join us for a lively talk about our experiences, mistakes, and success stories. Bring your questions and challenges, we are here for you!

Book Now:

A known company developed a powerful and outstanding product for social media. The first and main market was, as usual, the United States. One day, the company's board decided that it was time for growth and to penetrate new markets such as Europe, Asia, and Africa. The research and development department claimed — no problem, we are fully Unicode*… let’s go! Ouch… In this workshop, we will discuss internationalization, localization, and globalization. Together we will explore localization in depth: what are the fundamental problems that localization addresses, components of localization projects, localization tools, and localization project management. This workshop is particularly oriented to participants who are new to localization. This is an interactive workshop, so attendees are encouraged to prepare questions and topics that they would like to discuss during this workshop. *Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language (www.Unicode.org).

Book Now:

In this session, we explore the African Languages Landscape, technologies, and recommended methodologies. Takeaways: Attendees will get an overview of the African Languages Landscape, the major problems in building machine translation (MT) for African languages, and a roadmap on how to build an MT system for African languages.

How do you do business in Africa? What can you expect and how do you establish strong ties with local partners, buyers, and vendors? In this session, three LocLunch ambassadors will offer a glimpse into the business culture of their respective countries. Attendees can expect a lively conversation with lots of useful insights from this group.

In this session we will discuss the challenges involved in building an enterprise speech technology company that offers broad coverage of African languages. African languages are largely underserved by commercial speech technology providers and product market fit remains elusive at scale. Furthermore, data resources and limited academic research on training machine learning models for African languages present challenges to product development. We will highlight the importance of resource efficiency in delivering voice solutions in developing economies, building an ethical data collection operation in nine African countries, and managing challenges of partnering with large pan-African enterprises.

With some of the fastest growing economies, Africa is poised for innovation and entrepreneurship. Despite this rosy outlook, equal opportunities are not always afforded to women entrepreneurs. In this panel discussion, attendees will hear the stories of women who have built successful businesses, startups, and technology hubs that aim to solve regional economic and social issues. The women on this panel have been instrumental in initiatives and nongovernmental organizations that support, mentor, and train youth and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to be the future business leaders and innovators within their communities. Takeaways: Attendees will learn how countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are using edutech and innovation hubs to train youth and women to fill jobs in the growing digital economies. The panelists will touch on information communication technology policy-making strategies across the continent and how a diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda seeks to address the digital divide through inclusive technology.

FedTerm, the Eurotermbank Federated Network is a language technology project cofunded by the European Union (EU) and is free to anyone that wants to join. FedTerm works on a sophisticated network of terminology management that could be interesting for African countries and the world. In this presentation, we will demonstrate the FedTerm network and show the benefits of a sophisticated and customizable terminology solution that:

• Assists in terminology import, export, and management
• Is able to exchange information between other network members to continuously improve the network
• Has been developed by academic and technological EU industry leaders on artificial intelligence and language technologies

Then, attendees will be invited to discuss their terminology needs and challenges together with the FedTerm consortium. To help attendees understand what they can get from the FedTerm project, we recorded two short videos:

• For terminology or translation professionals: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nVwhSdtNie1iPsRTljd6KFSwtFn-Yr9Z/view
• For beginners, a more general overview might be helpful: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qrn69MeLx-cgktKlbp5pOWJit-PtxdWx/view

Book Now:

Three language service industry veterans will focus on the business and delivery of African languages, including discussions on the endless potential, good aspects and challenges for language service providers in Africa. Attendees will learn what is needed to support African languages, the requirements that must be met, and how to properly source qualified linguists. After covering how to build the team and attract clients, the discussion will include the proper tools and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success, as well as how to overcome common challenges. Takeaways: Attendees will learn how to overcome common challenges with infrastructure, technology, and talent sourcing; how to meet growing demand in the US for African languages; which KPIs will properly measure success; and how to manage and close the cultural gap that is often associated with providing support in an off-shore location.

In terms of technology, the case for African languages is far more than customization, productivity, and cost reduction. There is more to be done to support the efforts of preserving the unique cultural and cognitive perspectives provided by African languages. In this session, we aim to facilitate the communication between language professionals, researchers, and other stakeholders in the African translation and localization space. Thus, to better understand the needs, challenges, and relevant language technological tools, including machine translation (MT), computer-assisted translation, and other natural language processing/AI techniques. We will showcase examples of best practices and tools that have been leveraged to build successful African language translation and localization models.

Interested in a unique track at LocWorld? Are you ready to join the conversation and discussions? Again, we are holding an “unconference” at LocWorld. Never heard of that? An unconference consists of participant-driven sessions, decidedly without the conventional format of a conference. There are no PowerPoint presentations and no sales pitches! There are only topics the group votes on. There is no agenda until the participants create one on the spot, at the beginning of the meeting.

Join the hosts of our Global Toolbox sessions to find out more about each session. Each toolbox host will tell you something about their session, why they are doing it, and who it is for. Find out which session is right for you!

In this presentation, we will concentrate on local language experts and the languages that they work with. They will each give an overview of the language spread and distribution; uses of these languages on social media, in business, and in personal interaction; standardization; and translator resource availability. The areas and languages covered will be:

• Mali: Songhai (Sahel zone), Fulfulde, and Bambara
• Nigeria: Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba
• East Africa: Swahili variants including Sheng
• Ethiopia: Amharic, Oromo, and Tigrinya

In this session, we will focus on building relationships between Africa and other parts of the world in academia. By providing participants with an opportunity to meet and learn from each other, we enhance communication between the stakeholders that are involved in the African translation and localization industry, and to understand the needs and challenges from academia in Africa. Agenda:

• Introduction
• General introductions
• Presentation: Linguistic Panorama in Southern Africa by Tawanda Nhire
• Questions to be addressed:
  1. How popular is translation training in Africa?
  2. How popular is language training in Africa?
  3. Are students motivated to be part of our industry? Yes, no, why?
  4. What can we do to promote language/translation training in Africa?
  5. Other related issues
• Meet the Academics
• Round table
• Networking

A scholarship for free attendance is available. If you are interested, please reach out to  and tell us about yourself and why you are interested in this session. *Note that all LocWorldWide46 Africa attendees receive a 50% discount on Global Toolbox sessions! Just register first for the main conference and you will be sent a discount code.

Book Now:

In this interactive session, the CLEAR Global/Translators without Borders-Nigeria chatbot team will talk about how they applied natural language processing, making it accessible and usable to combat rumors and misinformation in Hausa and Kanuri. they will cover what their Shehu chatbot is; how they engaged the community in northeast Nigeria in designing the chatbot to ensure that it would be useful; how they combined traditional and tech-based communication methods to reach more people with critical information; and some lessons learned from this process. They would love some feedback from attendees on other ideas and different workarounds. Takeaways: Attendees will learn how to use both high- and low-tech solutions to engage speakers of marginalized languages; and how to develop natural language understanding in low-resource languages — the wins and challenges.

Machine translation (MT) for African languages is important for many reasons — from education to healthcare, from preserving culture to encouraging interaction with the global community. However, it is not without its challenges. In this session, we will dive into the challenges facing MT development for African languages and explore potential remedies. Bringing MT to African languages will accelerate bringing the African continent into the global online community. Takeaways: Attendees will recognize that the development of MT for African languages is a crucial element for bringing information and communication to the African continent; while there are challenges to the development of a high-quality MT engine for African languages, they are not insurmountable; engaging the people of Africa in a product to support communication and the availability of information not only empowers the African people, it is brilliant from a linguistic perspective and a critical component to ensure the success of MT in African languages.

Localization is the practice of growing a global audience by adapting a product experience so that it is linguistically-relevant, culturally-appropriate, legally-compliant, and globally-scalable. However sometimes this is not enough, and companies need to do more and go beyond localization. This is what Airbnb has done in some selected regions, including South Africa and Kenya. In this session, we will explain how Airbnb, through local partnerships, and going beyond localization, helped local hosts overcome barriers and become successful.

Africa’s economic growth over the past decade, coupled with its burgeoning youthful population, has made it the youngest and fastest-growing continent in the world. It is estimated that by 2035, Africa will have the world’s largest and youngest labor force — thus creating a workforce that will not only be well educated but prosperous and influential.  For Africa, and the world, to benefit from this demographic dividend, a concerted effort will be required through innovative solutions and networks to tackle the continent's challenges. The recently enacted Africa Continental Free Trade Area promises the free flow of people, goods, and services giving rise to a digitally connected super continental market but major investments in infrastructure, systems, and people will be paramount.

Interested in a unique track at LocWorld? Are you ready to join the conversation and discussions? Again, we are holding an “unconference” at LocWorld. Never heard of that? An unconference consists of participant-driven sessions, decidedly without the conventional format of a conference. There are no PowerPoint presentations and no sales pitches! There are only topics the group votes on. There is no agenda until the participants create one on the spot, at the beginning of the meeting.

Interested in a unique track at LocWorld? Are you ready to join the conversation and discussions? Again, we are holding an “unconference” at LocWorld. Never heard of that? An unconference consists of participant-driven sessions, decidedly without the conventional format of a conference. There are no PowerPoint presentations and no sales pitches! There are only topics the group votes on. There is no agenda until the participants create one on the spot, at the beginning of the meeting.

Big brands are beginning to move toward hyper-localization of smaller African languages. In this session, we will explore the phenomenon and see what can be learned together. In addition, we will discuss the trend of big businesses going more regional in their pursuit for sales, the effect of localizing anything into a new language, and beginning to recognize the societal impact. Part of this presentation will be describing a creative localization project done in conjunction with VMLY&R, a digital marketing agency. The project was a localization of the all-new Colgate Toothpowder which was developed to penetrate among the most rural and under-developed parts of Africa where communities have used charcoal and twigs to clean their teeth for decades. We will describe what drove the company to localize their campaign for the Kenyan, Swahili, and Kikuyu people. Our tasks included the transcreation of the radio commercial copy as well as the composition and recording of the jingle into these languages. We will cover the transcreation process that combines the localization processes of a minor dialect and to do it — to music — which was another mountain to climb. It was a wonderful project with many steps. Takeways: Attendees will learn about some common challenges to expect when expanding into African languages meaningfully; why a partnership approach is better with ambitious clients than a generic service provider; music localization is a “thing”; and how to approach and develop your internal processes.

The continent of Africa, especially West Africa, has a long and rich tradition of indigenously-created symbol systems that express meaning in ways that go well beyond conventional Western definitions of writing. As a result, they have often been dismissed as "primitive" or "childish." In this session, we will introduce a number of these systems and argue that, quite to the contrary, they use communication techniques that have a complexity and sophistication that we have lost by understanding and defining writing too narrowly.

Besides being home to over 2,000 languages, Africa is also home to several historic and modern scripts or writing systems, from ADLaM, Vai, and N’Ko to Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Meroitic Hieroglyphs. It is also a continent where scripts are still being invented. What is the process of getting a script onto a device or computer, and what are the obstacles? What is the level of implementation of the scripts and the languages that use them? Takeaways: Attendees will be introduced to the wide variety of indigenous writing systems in Africa and the challenges of getting them onto computers and devices, particularly in the crucial first step of getting the script into the Unicode Standard.

So, you are considering entering a new market. This is an exciting journey, make sure you prepare well for the ride! Is your goal clearly defined? What research have you conducted? What is your entry point, and do you already have some local partners to support you? These are just a few aspects to work on prior to any strategic business expansion, regardless of your target country or counties. If your mind is made up to set foot on African ground, you must be aware of both the cultural commonalities and differences to create a success story. Takeaways: Attendees will learn about business operations essentials to enter any new market; cultural commonalities and differences that affect expansion in Africa; and the nuances and complexities of Africa.

Africa’s economy has been growing for years but has seen recent headwinds. Despite this, Africa has some of the greatest opportunities for online growth as less than half of the population has internet access as of 2021, compared to 69% in the rest of the world. As Africans come online and expect the same services and opportunities as the rest of the world, they quickly run into the reality that major brands active in the region rely largely on a handful of colonial languages (English, French, Portuguese) plus Arabic and occasionally Afrikaans, but Africans speak more than 2,000 languages. Focusing on the top global tier of languages leaves many residents of the continent with little or no content in their preferred tongues. CSA Research has created a model that identifies 23 African languages currently of potential interest to digital marketers, with more emerging as individuals embrace the internet. These languages range from powerhouses such as Hausa and Yoruba to lingua francas such as Swahili. In addition, many of the languages have major dialects that require special targeting and consideration. Attend this session to learn about the value of these tongues and how you can reach these audiences more effectively. Understand which languages of Africa offer the greatest potential in terms of number of consumers and value, and which ones will gain the greatest geographic spread. Join us to up your game (and return on investment) in Africa.

Do you face these challenges: dramatically expanded company business, or a flat localization budget while the headcount remains the same? Adding to these challenges, agile development becomes the primary methodology in driving business factors. These challenges impact the traditional localization delivery model. What's the key path to succeed in business? Data guides us to manage the challenge of overwhelming requests for product localization with limited budget. What are the key metrics in localization 3.0? In this presentation, we will explore how localization should use the power of data analytics and fit into localization as a service. Takeaways: Attendees will learn that global expansion is a key business factor, what the key path to succeed in business is, and smart budget allocation can utilize the data technology to drive efficiency.

In times of crisis, when speedy information dissemination in local languages is critical, machine translation (MT) is an essential tool. But what happens when you’re working with a low-resource African language with poor output from existing MT engines? Well, you build a better one. In this presentation, our speakers will explore what it took for CLEAR Global (Translators without Borders) to address this absence of effective MT for African languages. We’ll discuss the challenges of data collection and corpora building, training for the communities, and why partnering with the right technology provider was crucial for success. Takeaways: Attendees will learn how MT developed for African languages can accelerate the translation process and how to develop such an engine, how communities work with a new MT, and how everyone can gain access to CLEAR Global's MT for African languages.

Impact sourcing is an increasingly valuable offering from language service providers (LSPs). Lionbridge's broad reach and localization expertise have supported Google in recent months as both companies have sought to outsource in a socially responsible manner. Success building solutions for staffing in India are now the foundation for African markets, where in 2020 the IFC predicted a $180 billion of internet-based economic growth over five years. Digital infrastructure investments will allow more potential workers to benefit from this outsourcing. To maximize impact, LSPs, clients, and nonprofits should offer career development paths to new employees. Takeaways: Attendees will see a successful model for assisting economically disadvantaged workers in India and how that concept can apply to other markets, including those in Africa, to accelerate growth in a socially responsible manner.

As the world’s second-largest and second-most populous continent, Africa is potentially one of the major sources of growth for the world. Even coming out of a world pandemic, Africa continues to improve its political stability and communications network, and has one of the youngest populations in the world which will be key to growing Africa’s strength. In this session, we will discuss some of the opportunities and pitfalls for expanding into Africa, including a look at the language landscape. We will also focus on impact sourcing in the localization industry, and how providers can train and prioritize career and educational opportunities to people with limited prospects — key to stimulating growth in African countries. Welocalize and Digital Divide Data (DDD) will give insight and share results into the impact sourcing models already in action in Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Nigeria to upskill talents to the needs of the localization industry. Takeaways: Attendees will learn about the economic opportunities and challenges in African countries for global brands; the state of the localization industry and African language landscape; and the importance of leveraging impact sourcing models to ensure African countries benefits from emerging business investments with insights into several live training programs.

It is estimated that there are over 2,000 languages spoken in Africa. Yet, there are few language services to be found on this vast continent, and the language industry does not seem to be thriving. In this panel discussion, industry analysts and experts from the African language service provider (LSP) market will first discuss the current gaps on the African market, before outlining how local and international players alike can turn them into opportunities. Specific focus will be given to the state of local LSPs, the use of language technology, the evolving market for local languages, best practices, and the role of associations. Takeaways: Attendees will learn what the African LSP market looks like today: structure, health of the current LSPs, the role and state of technology, and activity of existing local associations, clubs, and nonprofit organizations promoting the language service industry; opportunities: how the African market is evolving and where current gaps can be transformed into opportunities, such as language services for African languages; and how to succeed on the African market: best practices that international players should be aware of, and how local LSPs can help each other take the African market to the next level.

Now that you’ve decided to invest in Africa, how do you ensure your investment is sustainable and socially responsible? How do you define sustainability and responsibility? Our panel of experts from the three largest Sub-Saharan African economies will talk about doing business in Africa. They will go beyond the cultural stereotypes to understand the current business economy, describe common pitfalls for first-time investors, and make recommendations for prioritizing localization investment. Learn from these seasoned entrepreneurs and active community members. Takeaways: Attendees will learn how to avoid the most common cultural pitfalls that harm first-time investors in Africa; hear about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals which provide a blueprint for socially responsible investment; and learn how to invest in localization for Africa without growing the gender gap or growing other inequities.

As established localization clients and providers reach out to integrate ever scarcer language and technology resources worldwide, North Africa is a source for creative and entrepreneurial talent for the language industry. Our panel participants serve the European, Middle East, and other Western markets, and will discuss the background and current state of flourishing language and language technology resources across North Africa. In this panel, they will highlight the opportunities for enterprises and localizers to engage with a vibrant North African hub that provides both technologies as well as cultural and language support services that reach far beyond the North Africa region. Takeaways: Attendees will learn how localization technologies are being deployed and expanded by North African ventures — trends and challenges; understand the reach that North Africa localization ventures have across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the US; and learn how large global enterprises work with regional North African resources for successful expansion.

This session will offer several quick and dynamic presentations covering topics and ideas too interesting to ignore: Localizing Conversational AI in African Languages for Emerging Markets - Anuoluwapo Aremu (Masakhane) With threads of development in the digitization of African languages since the last decade, waves of successes have been recorded in machine translation, model architecture, named entity recognition, and automated speech recognition as they have also begun to add value to the African market. As startups and ventures continue raising series of funds on the continent, the user base of the solutions provided by these ventures has also grown over the years. Localizing conversations through virtual assistants in African languages will optimize sales and give engagement to language marginalized customers. Takeaways: An exposure on how conversational AI can advance localization in African languages and how experts in products could use that to optimize their market. The Skill Set of the Future: Fostering the Next Generation of Language Professionals in Canada - Lucie Séguin (Government of Canada, Translation Bureau) The paucity of entrants in the language professions is a well-known issue that universities and the industry have been tackling for decades. Yet with technology remodeling the landscape of the linguistic services marketplace, that issue is now being compounded by a redefinition of the skill set required to be an effective language professional. What skills should the language professionals of tomorrow possess, and how are those skills best nurtured? In this session, we will showcase the initiatives and partnerships put forward by the Government of Canada’s Translation Bureau to foster and support the next generation of Canadian language professionals. Takeaways: Attendees will get an overview of the dynamics of Canada's language industry; an understanding of the skill requirements agreed upon by the Canadian language industry; and a showcase of collaborative initiatives that have been proven effective in supporting the training of new language professionals. A Decision-making Support Tool for Investing in African Languages - Luca De Biase (Imminent) To increase exports, companies must win the trust of their potential customers. To accomplish this, they must demonstrate they can listen to customers and express their offerings in a language that the customers can understand well. How much should companies rationally decide to invest in translation services? The T-index is an evolving, customizable indicator that allows companies to calculate the value of their investment in translation. The T-Index works by considering a set of indicators such as the number of internet users existing in different countries, the languages spoken, the purchasing power of people, and their growing or shrinking importance of languages in perspective. Takeaways: How does a company decide how much to invest in localizing its online services into African languages? How does a company choose into which African languages to translate its business documents, user manuals and corporate presentations? A standard indicator does not exist. But a new quantitative experimental tool can be a starting point. Best Practices of Global Companies in Localizing Their Services for African Markets - Kirti Vashee (Translated) How should companies with a global strategy understand and respect the African wealth of cultural diversity? Are there global companies to learn from on how to deal with the different peoples living in African countries? How are companies with a leading global strategy choosing what languages they should use when localizing their services for different African countries? In this session, we analyze choices made by localization managers of leading global companies. Takeaways: Many African countries are home to different people speaking different languages. Attendees will learn how to choose the right ones to invest in. Multidisciplinary Collaboration for Language Dataset Development: A Case Study for Kiswahili Speech Recognition - Kathleen Siminyu (Mozilla Foundation) Language technologies, particularly speech technologies, are becoming more pervasive for access to digital platforms and resources. This brings concerns of their inclusivity in terms of language diversity. Additionally, research shows speech recognition to be more accurate for men than for women and more accurate for individuals younger than 30 years of age. In the Global South where languages are low resource, these same issues should be taken into consideration in data collection efforts to not replicate these mistakes. It is also important to note that in varying contexts within the Global South, this work presents additional nuance and potential for bias based on accents, related dialects, and variants of a language. This session is about the designing and execution of a linguists engagement for purposes of building an inclusive Kiswahili speech recognition dataset representative of the diversity among speakers of the language; the unexpected yet key learning in terms of sociolinguistics which demonstrate the importance of multidisciplinary in teams developing datasets and natural language processing technologies; and the creation of a test dataset intended to be used for evaluating the performance of speech recognition models on demographic groups that are likely to be underrepresented. Takeaways: Attendees will learn about the model/methodology for collaboration between computer scientists and linguists for dataset creation; sociolinguistics factors to consider when building speech technology for Kiswahili speakers; and how to preemptively design datasets to mitigate demographic bias.

Fifteen years ago, the first versions of a major American IT product were released in African languages: Microsoft released Language Interface Packs for Windows XP in Zulu, Tswana, Afrikaans, and Swahili in 2006. Many of the lessons learned at the time are just as valid today. In this presentation, we will talk about some of the challenges and lessons learned when entering African markets through localization. Takeaways: Attendees will get insights into the specific challenges for African markets and how to address them.

Many Africans can easily switch between the myriad of languages they speak. But there is little formal education in most languages, and even fewer institutions that prepare linguists for professional work in localization or translation. Addressing this will help businesses reach more people and have the added benefit of helping to give them a voice. A panel of four professional African linguists will argue that governments and industry leaders should invest in professional language services training infrastructure, particularly in marginalized languages. Takeaways: Attendees will hear about the neglected state of the African language profession, and what industry players and governments can do to bring about the much-needed change.