Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming industries worldwide. While Africa stands to benefit significantly from its advancements, the limited integration of African languages into AI systems poses a major obstacle to its full potential.

Orange announced, yesterday, a partnership with OpenAI and Meta to advance this initiative. The project, set to launch in the first half of 2025, aims to develop AI systems capable of recognizing and interacting with African languages.

West African languages such as Wolof and Pulaar will be the first to be included in the project. These languages will be integrated into OpenAI's Whisper and Meta's Llama technologies, which specialize in language recognition and translation.

Current AI models are predominantly trained using English-language data, which limits their capacity to support African languages. The underrepresentation stems from the scarcity of data available in these languages. To address this gap, Orange will contribute data from its local applications, particularly those used in customer service, to enhance AI processing of African languages.

One of the key objectives is to allow Orange users to interact with customer service in their native languages, making the user experience more seamless and accessible. The advancements achieved through this collaboration will extend beyond Orange’s services. The AI models developed will also be made available for non-commercial use, supporting public health and education initiatives.

By Servan Ahougnon

Editing by Sèna D. B. de Sodji