Language Observatory was invited to attend The First Pan African Cultural Congress. The congress was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at African Union's head office.


African Union's Head Office Entrance

On the second day (November 14th) of the congress, the session on "Culture, Language and Education" was convened. In the session, the first presentor, Mr. Adama Samassekou, the president of the African Academy of languages (ACALAN), invited me to present a short report on our joint survey project "African Web Survey". I reported a brief summary of the survey. 54% of web-pages in African domains are written in English, 30% are in French, 4% are in Arabic, but only 0.5% are in African languages, etc.


African Union's Main Conference Room

After two initial presentations, the floors are invited to discuss. Although there are some optimism like "African children are now ready to go into cyberspace. The new generations of Africa are quite ready for ICT.", majority recognizes a serious need of actions to be taken. "an access to ICT should be democratized", "grass-root use of ICT is the key", "IPR does not belong to musicians, that's the problem", "heritage is our pride, we should create historical, cultural contents using our own languages", "negative attitude of intellectuals to our mother tongue is the major cause behind the problem", "why we don't teach university students by our own languages?", "while Holywood is totally digitized, our film makers are still using celluloid film", "there are no e-dictionaries of our languages, no virtual museum of our culture in cyberspace", etc.

One of the Bamako workshop participants in June 2006, Mr. Alfred Mtenje from Malawi, proposed two immediate actions.
1) To support creation of on-line African language courses and
2) To support "intellectualization of African languages" (to start and encourage the use of African languages beyond primary school level).

While majority of participants focuses cultural, social aspects of the issue and does not mention much about technology aspects, I hope that our report gave some impacts to consider "digital language divide" issue during the session.

Bamako, République du Mali, 26 au 28 juin 2006

>>English

Organizer: Académie Africaine des Langues et Language Observatory
Sponsor: Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
Supporter: ICVolunteers

6/26
09:00-09:30	Discours d'ouverture (Adama Samassekou, Président de l'Académie Africaine des Langues)
09:30-11:00	Projet de recherche liée aux langues africaines
	1. Introduction au LOP
	2. Recherche liée aux langues africaines sur le web
	3. Résultat des recherches préliminaires
	(Yoshiki Mikami, Directeur du LOP, professeur de l’Université technologique de Nagaoka)
	Shigeaki Kodama, Membre du LOP, chercheur à l’Université technologique de Nagaoka)
11:00-12:00	Rapports des experts (par les participants africains, chacun 30 minutes)
12:00-14:00	Déjeuner
14:00-15:30	Rapports des experts (par les participants africains, chacun 30 minutes)
15:30-16:00	Pause-café
16:00-17:00	Rapports des experts (par les participants africains, chacun 30 minutes)
6/27
09:00-12:00	Introduction au module d’identification des langues (LIM) (Shigeaki Kodama, Membre du LOP, chercheur à l’Université technologique de Nagaoka)
	1. Concepts essentiels du LIM
	2. Comment utiliser le LIM
12:00-14:00	Déjeuner
14:00-17:00	Formation du LIM (Shigeaki Kodama, Membre du LOP, chercheur à l’Université technologique de Nagaoka)
	1. Collecter les échantillons sur l’Internet
	2. Comment analyser les échantillons collectés Le modérateur fera la lecture avec le projecteur. L’accès à Internet sera nécessaire. Il est plus utile que les participants apportent leurs ordinateurs de sorte qu’ils puissent accéder à Internet.
6/28
09:00-10:00	Présentation des aspects de la notre recherche par l’Université technologique de Nagaoka
	1. Analyse des liens entre les sites Internet africains
	2. Utilisation de logiciels libres
	3. Connexion à la toile
	4. Serveurs offshores
10:00-12:00	Discussion des aspects de notre recherche
12:00-14:00	Déjeuner
16:00-17:00	Projeter d’exécuter du projet, particulièrement, en ce qui concerne la composition du rapport final, la distribution des thèmes, Horaire des révisions et de la publication, forme du rapport, etc.

Date	: 26-28 June, 2006
Place	: Bamako, Mali
Organizer	: African Acadey of Languages : Language Observatory
Sponsor	: Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
Supporter	: ICVolunteers

6/26 Mon
09:00-09:30	Opening Speech (Adama Samassekou, President of the African Academy of Languages)
09:30-11:00	African language survey project
	1. Introduction to LOP
	2. Survey of African languages on the web
	3. Result of preliminary surveys
	(Yoshiki Mikami, the Leader of LOP, Prof. of Nagaoka University of Technology,
	Shigeaki Kodama, LOP member, Researcher of Nagaoka University of Technology)
11:00-12:00	Experts reports (by the African Participants, 30 min. each)
	Experts are requested to report a general description of language situation in each country/ region
12:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-15:30	Experts reports (by the African Participants, 30 min. each)
15:30-16:00	Tea break
16:00-17:30	Experts reports (by the African Participants, 30 min. each)
6/27 Tue
09:00-12:00	Introduction to Language Identification Module (LIM)
	(Shigeaki Kodama, LOP member, Researcher of Nagaoka University of Technology)
	1.Key concepts of LIM
	2.How to use LIM
12:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-17:00	Practice in LIM (Shigeaki Kodama, LOP member, Researcher of Nagaoka University of Technology)
	1. Collecting sample pages using the Internet
	2. How to analyze collected pages
	Lectures will be held using a projector. An access to the Internet is also required.
	It would be helpful of participants if they bring their own PCs and can access the Internet.
6/28 Wed
09:00-10:00	Presentation on the aspects of our survey by Nagaoka University’s side
	1. Web link analysis of African web
	2. Open source software usage
	3. Network connection
	4. Offshore server
10:00-12:00	Discussion on the aspects of our survey
12:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-17:00	Planning how to implement project, especially on the composition of the final report, the assignment of the themes, the schedule of reviews and publication, the formality of the report, etc.

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Name	Title
Adama Samassekou	Président, Académie Africaine des Langues, Mali
Mikami Yoshiki	Professor, Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan Leader, Language Observatory Project
Tunde Adegbola	Executive Director, African Languages Technology Initiative (Alt-I), Nigeria
Marcel Diki-Kidiri	Chargé de Recherche, Laboratoire Langage Langues et Culture d’Afrique noire (LLACAN), France
Alfred Dailex Mtenje	Professor, University of Malawi Chancellor College, Malawi
Mamadou Lamine Sanogo	Chargé de Recherche, Institut des Sciences des Sociétés, Burkina Faso
Naomi Luchera Shitemi	Associate Professor, Moi University, Kenya
Thierry Afane-Otsaga	Enseignant-Chercheur, Université Omar Bongo, Gabon
Solomon Atnafu Basufekad	Assistant Professor, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
Bechir Raddaoui	Ministry of Communication Technologies, Tunisia
Said Chemakh	Assistant-Teacher in linguistic, DLCA, Human Sciences and Languages School, University of Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria
Viola Krebs	IC Volunteers, Geneva
Virach Sornlertlamvanich	Co-director, Thai Computational Linguistics Laboratory (TCL), Thailand
Emmanuel Sagara	ACALAN
Soulaymane Sangare	ACALAN
Kodama Shigeaki	Researcher, Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan
Shiota Katsuhiko	Lecturer, Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Japan
Ikechkwu Anyanwu	President, Placade Japan

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Pariticipating African Countries

Language Observatory, African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) and Linguasphere Observatory have been collaborating on African Web Language Survey Project since Tunis phase of WSIS held in Tunis during 14-18 November 2005. It conincided with the launch of the African ICT Week initiated by African Union Commission.

Objectives of the project are:

1. To get the most accurate language map of African cyberspace and the status of “digital divide” in African continent, and to raise public awareness of it
2. To demonstrate the usefulness of multi-stakeholders’ collaboration under the umbrella of the World Network for Linguistic Diversity

Expected deliverables of the project are:

1. Language Map of African Cyberspace (Cyberspace Language Census Report): To show how many pages are written in each language, in each country domain.
2. Web Usage Maturity Analysis Report: To show how web technology are used in each country domain. For example, web links, web maintenance, server technology, open source software usage, etc.
3. Web Infrastructure Report: To show network performance and geographical locations of web servers.

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Date	Actions & Events
2005/11/15	The Round Table organized by African Academy of Languages (ACALAN). The meeting was held as one of parallel events registered at World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), Tunis Phase. Members involved in this project first met and discussed the common interests.(see archive)
2005/11/19	ACALAN, Linguasphere Observatory and Language Observatory had a meeting at Hotel Acropole, nearby the WSIS Conference Complex, to discuss about a joint action plan. (see archive)
2006/02/11	The experimental survey draft of Cyberspace Language Census was circulated among the members for their review
2006/02/21-24	The 7th International Mother Language Day cerebrated at UNESCO Headquarter, Paris. During this week members discussed the project and future action agenda. (see UNESCO Web News)
2006/??	African Web Survey Workshop will be organized by members, hosted by ACALAN in Bamako, Mali. Several African eperts will be invited to join to the workshop to have a detailed discussion how to implement the survey.
2006/11/14-20	2nd African ICT Week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. During this event, the final reports of the project will be announced.

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REFERENCE
[1] Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing online
[2] African Union Commission's site on African ICT Week

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