Will New Tech Rescue Africa’s Disappearing Languages?

Lucky Uwakwe, Chairman of Nigeria’s Blockchain Industry Coordinating Committee (BICCoN), has called for the use of blockchain and artificial intelligence to preserve the languages of African tribes. He warned that community migrations due to security issues could lead to the extinction of many languages and dialects.  

He also highlighted that most global tech companies currently do not offer modern applications in local languages, which limits their usage among African residents, including AI-based chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini. As an example, he mentioned the situation in Nigeria:  

Google only offers translation for 3–4 languages (Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, and Pidgin) out of over 100 languages. The rest are almost dying because software developers lack training models.

Lucky proposes a system where residents can earn tokens for providing information about their native languages and assisting in creating documentation. Developers could then use this data to populate a specialized blockchain and train AI systems.  

Lucky Uwakwe is a strong advocate of decentralization, particularly blockchain, and serves as the CEO of Sabi Group, where he promotes new technologies and Web3 across all open African countries.