Africa: UNECA Champions Local Language On Net

[Harold Schiffman]

~

Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown)


NEWS
13 December 2007
Posted to the web 13 December 2007

By David Muwanga


The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) recently
launched the Academic Network of African Researchers on Languages to
undertake research on how "Internet language" can be simplified and
translated into local languages. "We want to link computer sciences
closer with languages with an objective of bridging the language
digital divide that does hinder our local people from using ICTs
especially in the use of Internet," said UNECA's Director of ICT,
Science and technology Division Aida Opoku-Mensah.

At the same time, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
has launched a programme to review the national ICT policies of
African countries on how they address the issue of languages. "We
would like to see which country has language in its ICT policy", said
IDRC Senior Programme Specialist Dr. Adel El Zaim. He said it remains
the role of African governments to monitor and implement policies
encouraging use of local language and encourage its application in
schools.


"If a government in Africa implements such a programme it would have
created employment for the local software developers, while many local
people would benefit from and understand the local content since it
will not be in foreign languages," he emphasised. He noted that IDRC
has set up an ICT project covering Morroco, Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt and
Sudan but is facing implementation hiccups due to lack of a single
language to be used in the process.

"In Morocco and Tunisia we had French, while in Sudan, Jordan and
Egypt we found Arabic and English languages being used. We are talking
of a knowledge society and in the end we had to use all the three
languages in the network in order to enable them communicate with the
rest of the World,' he said.

Chairman of the advisory committee in ICANN, Mohammed Sharil Tarmizi
said Africa's Internet penetration is only at 3.5 percent.

"We have more than 6800 languages in the world but how many of them
are African and are used on the Internet? African governments should
set up policies that give guidelines on how trhey should get involved
in language issues and commit the telecommunication providers to
venture into rural areas instead of isolating them," he emphasised. He
said that out of the 6800 languages that were identified by the United
Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisations (UNESCO), 94
percent are spoken by only 3 percent of the world population.

"In Africa we know there are languages that are not written and with
time they would disappear. But if we use our local content, we would
be enabling our people to create own jobs and products that are
relevant for the emerging people and the emerging market," he said.




http://allafrica.com/stories/200712131227.html

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