East Africa: Mother tongue interference on the Internet

[Harold Schiffman]

Mother tongue interference on the Internet

By BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI

IN A CONTINENT WHERE ALMOST all languages are absent in cyber space,
23-year-old Kiganira Deogracious Kijambu has a dream that one day he
will access the Internet in Lusoga, his mother tongue.  So far, he has
managed to build his e-commerce agricultural business from a humble
Ush200,000 ($117) in 2003 to Ush600,000 ($352) today despite all the
obstacles facing rural communication. He is optimistic that if all his
clients, agents and suppliers were able to communicate in Lusoga, a
language used in his home region in Mayuge District about 100
kilometres east of Kampala, his business would boom.

Mayuge is one of the seven districts in Busoga region with a
population of close to 400,000 people. Lusoga is spoken by the Basoga,
a Bantu ethnic group that occupies the region between Lake Victoria
and Lake Kyoga. They grow crops such as cotton, coffee, bananas,
potatoes and cassava, fruits and vegetables.  "My wish is to access
the Internet in Lusoga," said Kijambu, a trained accountant. He uses
the Batud ICT Training Centre in Mayuge to access the Internet for his
e-commerce trade.

"If we had the Internet in Lusoga, it would link many people in my
area since very few of us understand English," Kijambu said. "Although
some people have acquired computer skills, language is still a
problem."

Kijambu acknowledges that although the Internet has brought about
prosperity for some enterprises, further growth is being hindered by
the dominance of English.

"My business is only limited to those few who understand and use
English. I would have had more customers if the Internet was in
Lusoga," he said.

Kijambu buys maize and coffee in his home area, searches for the
current prices on the Internet and then posts the quantity of the
products ordered by his clients who are mostly schools.

One formidable obstacle to Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) is language. In 2005, only 20 per cent of all Websites in the
world were in languages other than English, and most of these were in
Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.

LESS THAN 10 PER CENT OF people in Africa are English-literate, while
the rest speak languages that are hardly represented on the web. As a
result, there is little use for computers, which means they cannot
drive market demand for computer applications in their language.

It has been acknowledged by ICT experts that linguistic and cultural
diversity are realities of development, and knowledge is expressed and
conveyed in all languages and cultures.

"ICT can transcend them all, and it is our willingness to exploit that
potential that will make a difference in ensuring full access to
technology for effective participation in development and the
knowledge society," observes Global Knowledge (GK), the world's first
and leading multi-stakeholder network committed to harnessing the
potential of ICT for sustainable and equitable development.

"Localisation includes ensuring content and user interfaces are
available in all users' languages, and adapted to cultural preferences
and sensitivities," GK adds.

Knowledge is an ingredient of development, and if ICTs are to promote
development, they must adopt the local languages. Some 1,500 to 2,000
African languages have been identified and classified by linguists.

The people of Uganda belong to three distinct ethnic groups
(Nilo-Hamites, Nilotics and Bantu) that can be broken into more than
50 ethnic nationalities, each identified by its own vernacular
language.

The manager of Batud ICT Training Centre, Paul Bamwesige, said lack of
local African languages on the Internet is a big challenge. "We
download information and translate it for our users. Because these
people do not speak English, we face the problem of translating
jargons, concepts and explanations hence creating a communication
gap," he said.

THE BATUD ICT project is the only one of its kind in Uganda. It
downloads information and translates it for its users upon request
into Lusoga. Like all other facilities in the country, it faces the
challenge of unreliable power supply. It also has to contend with high
Internet tariffs and an unreliable service by the providers.

"If we had the Internet in local languages, there would be effective
application of ICTs in the communities because mother tongue remains
paramount to our everyday life, thus supplementing government
social-economic programmes," Bamwesige said.

Speaking at the Third Global Knowledge Conference in Kuala Lumpur in
December last year, the president of the African Academy of Languages
(Acalan), Adama Samassekou, noted that language expression is a right
to practice cultural rights in diversity.

"Cultural diversity is a heritage," Samassekou said at the conference
that brought together 2,000 global visionaries, innovators,
practitioners and policy makers.

"Unfortunately, Africa is still dominated by colonial languages, while
local languages have been confined to the spoken word," he added.

Samassekou told The EastAfrican: "If you want to change the world,
your mother tongue is the tool, because language is embedded in the
way you think, see the world, express your feelings and vision, and
interact with others. No community can develop without the use of
mother tongue, specifically in science and technology."

African universities are working on various techniques to promote
greater access to ICT, including developing prototypes, and exploring
potential technologies that can be adopted for rural communities in
Africa such as mobile commerce (m-commerce). Distance learning through
the Internet answers the social and economic barriers to education in
different parts of the world. Developing a system is one thing and
adopting it is another.

The Pan African Localisation (PAL) project that started in 2005 plans
to have 100 languages localised by 2010. Localisation includes
translation and cultural adaptation of user interfaces and software
applications, as well as creation and translation of Internet content
in diverse languages. The project seeks to address localisation in two
overlapping regions — Africa and Arabic-speaking countries. Its main
focus is on sub-Saharan Africa and predominantly Arabic-speaking North
Africa.

More recently, software giant Microsoft launched its Kiswahili Windows
products targeting the 100 million Kiswahili speakers in the East
African region (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and parts of the Horn of
Africa, Great Lakes, Malawi, Mozambique and the Indian Ocean Islands).
Ten per cent have access to computers, and Microsoft hopes to attract
5 per cent more with its Kiswahili version products in the market.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations
agency, estimates that one billion people worldwide still lack
connection to any kind of ICT. Most of them depend on agriculture for
their livelihood. While the Internet has immense potential as a
powerful driver of innovation, sustainable economic growth and social
wellbeing, growth is restricted in many countries because of lack of
access, ITU observes.

While the total of fixed-line phones, mobile subscribers and Internet
users has grown substantially in the past few years, only 18 per cent
of the world's population currently has access to the Internet.

According to the Internet Usage and Population Statistics for Africa
prepared by InternetWorldStasts.Com, out of the over 941 million
people on the continent, only 44 million have access to the Internet,
representing a 4.7 per cent penetration rate. Of the 5.6 billion
people in the rest of the world, 1.2 billion used the Internet as of
November 30, 2007, indicating a 21.5 per cent penetration rate.

MALAYSIAN PRIME MI-nister, Dato'Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, expressed
concern that: "Beyond the issue of high infrastructural costs, other
barriers such as a lack of relevant content, poor technological
support and the dominance of the English language on the Internet
continue to hinder many developing countries from participating in the
knowledge-economy. Indeed, the lack of local content for developing
countries is seen as one of the key factors leading to the widening of
the global digital divide."

Some countries are trying to bridge the gaps locally. In an effort to
popularise ICTs in rural areas, the Uganda Communications Commission
(UCC) has decided to provide translated versions of each District Web
Portal across the country, after realising that the absence of local
languages has hindered the usage of these websites.

UCC started and administers a Universal Service Fund (USF) for
communications in accordance with the provisions of the Communications
Act of 1997.

This USF is the Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF). RCDF is
mandated to provide access to basic communication services within a
reasonable distance to all the people in Uganda, leverage investment
to rural communications development and promote ICT usage.

"Now that we appreciate that language is one of the limitations for
usage of the District Web Portals among other ICTs, we have provided a
translated version of each Web Portal into the respective local
languages," the RCDF fund manager Bob H. Lyazi told The EastAfrican.

"The inclusion of local content will help to increase participation of
Ugandans, especially those in rural areas," he noted. He added that
this will be in two areas; translation of the available content into
local languages and uploading appropriate content for a given
community. "That way, we will be able to bring about increased usage
of ICTs in rural areas."

RCDF was started in 2003 to provide Internet points-of-presence,
Internet cafes, and ICT training centres in each district, create
district web portals and install public pay phones for every 1,200
inhabitants or every parish.

Increasing Internet access is hindered by unreliable power supply and
high bandwidth costs. "It costs me Ush30-50 (0.02-0.03 US cents) per
minute to access the Internet," said Kijambu. "That is too costly for
me."

HOWEVER, INTERNET USE has grown from 233,675 users in 2002 to 1.6
million in 2006. A UCC survey shows that 46 per cent of the
respondents use the Internet daily, 42 per cent once a month and 11
per cent don't use at all.

It was also disclosed that eight out of 10 people access the Internet
through cafes although satisfaction remains low; 41 per cent of the
respondents felt connection speeds were slow, expensive and not
reliable, characterised by frequent breakdowns.

The East African Submarine Cable system is expected to reduce the
costs, increase the connectivity speed and – with more local content
online — give more people meaningful access to the Internet.

http://www.nationmedia.com/eastafrican/current/Magazine/mag180220084.htm

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