Burkina Faso is placing local languages at the core of its artificial intelligence (AI) development as part of a broader push for digital sovereignty.
The Ministry of Digital Transition, Posts and Electronic Communications has launched a high-priority workshop through the Permanent Secretariat of Innovation and Monitoring of Emerging Digital Technologies (SP-ISN).
The session is dedicated to the linguistic formalisation and creation of a massive data corpus for Large Language Models in Mooré, Dioula, Fulfuldé, and Gulmancema.
The initiative unites a diverse group of stakeholders, including teacher-researchers, linguists, journalists, and AI specialists.
These experts will build the essential linguistic foundations for tools such as voice recognition, automatic translation, and voice synthesis, says the government.
This workshop is a cornerstone of the country’s 2030 Horizon strategy and its specific National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence.
The eleventh pillar of this roadmap aims to train a new generation of local AI experts, develop a sovereign digital ecosystem, and harness the potential of AI across key development sectors, says Dr Aminata Zerbo-Sabané, minister of digital transition, posts and electronic communications.
Through the integration of national languages in emerging technologies, Burkina Faso is affirming its willingness to build AI that is inclusive, accessible, and adapted to its socio-cultural context, the ministry stated.
The project is being funded through the Fast-Tracking Digital Transformation framework. By creating these localised data sets, the government aims to ensure that digital services in health, agriculture, and education are accessible to citizens who do not speak French, thereby reducing the digital divide.
The formalisation of these languages into machine-readable formats is an essential step toward ensuring that African heritage is represented in the global AI landscape, notes the SP-ISN.
