ICTworks by Inveneo

That is what I think many good intentioned people do when they install computer systems without locally relevant content - they deploy the equivalent of a computer lab filled with the Star Trek cannon in Klingon.

Think about it. If your users are not literate in English, if they cannot read and write in the Internet's main language, what they see on screen makes as much sense as Klingon does to you or I.

And before you think users will find or create content in their own language, let us look at the article per language count on Wikipedia. If we add in the number of people who know each language, you can quickly see that many African languages are grossly under-represented online.

Now the Wikipedia isn't the entire Internet, but it is a good proxy for user-generated content online. And if your users speak Kiswahili, Luganda, Chichewa, or Xhosa, giving them a computer lab with English-only content is as useful as Klingon.

Geuza was a winner at the Samsung Kenya Apps Contest last year, and I can see why: its a hot language learning tool designed for mobile phones. A real Kenyan mLearning solution!

So what does it do? Its a Swahili-English translation game application that test’s your knowledge of Swahili vocabulary and helps you improve your fluency in East Africa's most common language. Here is a video demo of Geuza in action:

Written by Sam Kariu as an Open Source software, you can download Geuza for free and improve it as you wish.

With over 5 Million native speakers and more than 150 Million Africans speaking Kiswahili in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, the DR Congo, parts of Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi and South Sudan, Kiswahili is officially an international language and the most widely understood language in Africa after Arabic.

With the Kiswahili Language Interface Pack (LIP), users can install a local language version "Skin" on top of an existing installation of the Windows Operating System and standard Microsoft Office system application. LIP converts the entire Microsoft Office products such as Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint - from English into Kiswahili.

According to the Director Kenya Institute of Education, Mrs Lydia Nzomo , the application is the product of more than two month's work among the various stakeholders in East and Southern Africa under Microsoft's broader 'Local Language Programme'. The programme was headed by Mpasua Msonobari, Chief Executive Officer Languages Africa. According to Mr. Mpasua, a team of linguistics experts participated in the creation of a glossary of more than 300,000 Kiswahili words for common computer terms.

Download the Kiswahili Language Interface Pack

Over the last five years, Microsoft has worked with partners across the continent to bring local languages to life. Currently Windows and Office products are available in 15 written and spoken languages in Africa: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, English, French, Hausa, Igbo, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Kiswahili, Portuguese, Sesotho SA Leboa, Setswana (Tswana), Spanish and Yoruba.

Tanzania, this is your opportunity to bring Africa's information online by creating Wikipedia articles in Kiswahili.

You are the wellspring of Kiswahili in East Africa. Show your paossion for the language by translating English Wikipedia articles into Kiswahili or by writing your own articles from scratch, building a richer online experience for 100 million African users who speak Kiswahili.

Prizes includes laptops, mobile phones, prepaid internet access modems, Google T-shirts, and more. Participants will also receive certificate of participation.

But you better hurry - it looks like Kenya is already dominating the contest.

Learn more here: Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge, sponsored by Google

We've seen all manner of business models upended with the digital revolution, from travel agents to the entire music industry. And now, Google has just wiped out another. Its time to say goodbye to text translation services for Swahili and Afrikaans.

Good Enough

If you jump around the Internets long enough, you'll find Google Translate an indispensable aid in breaking down language barriers. You can put in text or just the URL and Google will create a pretty good translation of your target text in multiple languages.

No, Google doesn't produce elegant translation, but its good enough and that's its competitive edge. For the vast majority of translation work, you're looking for the general point of the text, not a legally equivalent document. So Google Translate, at free, is eliminating the vast majority of translations jobs.

Now in Two African Languages

And now they've expanded their services to include Kiswahili and Afrikaans targeting the millions in East and Southern Africa that speak these languages more fluently than English. And they're doing it for free. In fact, I've even added their handy widget to this post.

• Bad News:
  Translation services companies who previously had a lock on Kiswahili and Afrikaans markets will soon see a significant decline in demand. The majority of requests that were for basic documents is about to migrate to Google Translate. Yet, they'll not go out of business. There is still a need for professional, human, translation - there always will be.
• Good News
  By removing a major barrier to cross language communication, Google Translate has just opened whole worlds of content to those who either only know Kiswahili and Afrikaans or who don't. And with its low barrier to use (Internet access, web browser), Google has democratized what was once rare and expensive.

What Languages Next?

In cheering the Google Translate expansion into Africa, I do hope they don't stop with only two. There are so many more languages, like say Amharic, Kinyarwanda, or Hausa, that would have equal impact as Kiswahili or Afrikaans in bringing a new population online. Let us hope and envision a day when every language is only a click away from our own.