Google adds Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, 12 other African languages, to Voice Search, Gboard talk-to-type, and Translate dictation, allowing approximately 300 million more Africans to interact with the web using their voices.
Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Nigerian pidgin Chichewa, Kikuyu, Oromo, Rundi, Shona, Somali, Tigrinya, and Twi are the latest languages added to Voice Search and Gboard’s talk-to-type features. On Translate, voice input is now available in Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Chichewa, Oromo, Rundi, Shona, Somali, South Ndebele, Swati, Tigrinya, Tswana and Twi.
Google already supports typing with custom keyboards in Gboard for around 200 African languages and automatic translation in Translate for over 60 languages spoken in Africa.
The tech company confirmed that Gboard and Voice Search now support 12 more languages, bringing the total to 25. Translate adds 13 new languages, bringing the total to 22.
Google attributes this result to advances in AI, specifically multilingual speech recognition, which translates speech into text. The AI model learns languages in ways a child would, associating speech sounds with sequences of characters in written form.
Speech recognition models are trained on data from multiple languages to transcribe speech into text in any of those languages.
$5.8 million commitment by Google.org
Similarly, the company announced a $5.8 million commitment by Google.org to support AI skilling and education across sub-Saharan Africa. The funds will be used to provide foundational AI and cybersecurity skills to workers and students and support nonprofit leaders and the public sector in developing these skills.
According to the company, recipients of the funding include the Data Scientists Network Foundation, which will receive a $1.5 million grant to create a programme that trains unemployed and at-risk Nigerians in digital and technology training, with the long-term goal of developing advanced data and AI skills.
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Raspberry Pi Foundation will also collaborate with Young Scientists Kenya and Data Scientists Network Foundation to provide AI literacy education to Kenyan and Nigerian youth.
“This new funding builds on the $20 million of Google.org support for organisations helping Africans develop digital skills from Google’s economic opportunity initiative, ” Google added.
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