Grace Ashiru
Following a highly competitive open call for proposals that attracted over 800 applications from 64 countries, 85 per cent of which were from Africa, the Masakhane African Languages Hub announced 26 awardees for the LINGUA Africa. The selected projects span three funding categories, namely: Data Creation: Building and curating datasets and language resources, Model or Tool Development: Developing models, benchmarks, and infrastructure, and Sectoral Applications: Deploying language technologies in real-world settings with measurable impact
LINGUA Africa is an initiative led by the Masakhane African Languages Hub, in collaboration with the Gates Foundation, Microsoft AI for Good Lab, and Google.org. The initiative strengthens the foundations of inclusive AI in Africa by supporting the creation of open language resources, enabling tools, and real-world applications for African languages.
Key Highlights Among the 26 Awardees:
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Sign Language Inclusion: Arusha Technical College (Tanzania) is building datasets for Tanzanian Sign Language.
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Dialectal AI Precision: HausaNLP (Nigeria) is advancing models capturing regional nuances across Kananci, Sakkwatanci, Zazzaganci, and Katsinanci dialects.
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Public Health & Civic Action: Organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO), Infectious Diseases Institute (Uganda), and Ushahidi (Kenya) are deploying health and emergency AI tools across dozens of regional languages.
Click here to view all awardees
Chenai Chair, the Director of Masakhane African Languages, said, “We congratulate all successful applicants and thank every individual and organization that submitted a proposal. The overwhelming response demonstrates the growing momentum of the African language AI community and reinforces our shared commitment to building open, inclusive, and impactful AI for Africa. The hub remains committed to ensuring that African languages are not treated as an afterthought in the AI era, but as essential parts of a more inclusive digital future.”
