Thursday, 2nd September 2021
African Library and Information Associations & Institutions (AfLIA) Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, 2019
Image courtesy of AfLIA, CC BY
Report by Leanne Rencken,[1] for OER Africa.
Three inspiring conversations with remarkable African librarians provided me with great hope that our libraries on the African continent are in good hands.
Why did I have these conversations? My mission was to find out more about the ongoing collaboration between the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) and OER Africa.
OER Africa has developed three learning pathways, as part of its grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and, along with AfLIA, is piloting them with university and academic librarians on the continent.
The pilot project focused on three learning pathways:
- Find Open Content is a short tutorial for participants to acquire the skills necessary to search for open content, decipher Creative Commons rights and permissions and evaluate the accuracy and relevance of Open Educational Resources (OER) identified.
- Adapt Open Content provides a rapid solution to adapting open content for new purposes. It covers adaptation options, and how to revise and remix open content.
- Publish using Open Access explains what Open Access is, and why academics might consider publishing in this way. It goes on to discuss publishing options, guidelines, and touches on other Open movements.
I spent a few delightful hours on Zoom calls with Dr Nkem Osuigwe, who is based in Nigeria, but commutes to Accra, Ghana for work, Dr Sarah Kaddu, who is based in Kampala, Uganda and Dr Ayanda Lebele, who is based in Palapye, Botswana.
With their shared vision, curiosity, thirst for knowledge, leadership, and a collection of PhDs, it’s not surprising that I’m in awe of these three women who, in one way or another, are stewards of library science and services on the African continent.
Dr Nkem Osuigwe, who is the Human Capacity Development and Training Director at AfLIA, chatted to me about the pilot, in which 50 librarians across Africa participated, and who, by completing these learning pathways, are testing innovative alternative approaches to continuing professional development (CPD), to reduce dependence on traditional workshop-based professional development.
Dr Osuigwe reveals herself through anecdotes; she is a great storyteller and admits she is driven by curiosity and her love for anything that concerns reading. She is the only librarian in a family of medical professionals, her late father, husband, and children included. She explains that she holds a position of importance in her home, because doctors can’t know everything, and often turn to their in-house librarian for research assistance.
This same thirst for knowledge, and innate hunger to find out more about how the world works led to her appointment at AfLIA and how she approaches her current position.
As she describes it, AfLIA is the platform for all librarians in Africa to come together, learn from each other, and encourage one another. It’s a strong network of different types of libraries, as well as an advocate for better operating environments for libraries on the continent. One of her most vivid memories, from when she first started out at AfLIA, is of a goosebumps-inducing visit to a library in Nakaseke, just outside Kampala. She was struck by how much the humble, two-room establishment influenced and involved the community it served.
"This little library could get news from the radio, TV, newspapers, but also books. They knew when and where it was going to rain, the cost of seedlings, how to get better produce. They were passing this information down to members of the community, so, in turn that made the community go there to find out, ‘where do I sell my bananas today, at what price, how do I sell them, which market will give me higher prices…’ That was the first time I realized that public libraries can really do awesome things when the people that work there understand what it is all about, when they engage their user communities more."
Thanks to this need to know more, see more, and do more, coupled with her networking skills, Dr Osuigwe stumbled across open licensing. She pursued a friendship with Amna Singh of StoryWeaver on Twitter, and, through these interactions was introduced to Pratham Books (India) and its enormously appealing StoryWeaver project. This work sees the creation of openly licensed children’s storybooks that can be translated, copied, and adapted at will, because of the Creative Commons licence used. Once she had made the connection, written a book for the platform, and participated in a StoryWeaver competition to translate children’s stories, Dr Osuigwe had a better idea of the potential for open licensing, what it means for African libraries, and how children can access books in their mother tongue.
And because Dr Osuigwe goes all-in with everything she does, she continued to make fruitful connections, initially via Twitter and then in-person, between AfLIA and Wikimedia, as well as AfLIA and OER Africa. Subsequently, several productive projects have ensued.
For the learning pathways pilot, AfLIA selected potential participants from amongst its tertiary-level librarian community. They received questionnaires to ascertain their knowledge of OER and open licensing, Open Access, and using the Internet to retrieve information. Librarians from nine universities in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda were ultimately selected.
Dr Lebele and Dr Kaddu were two of the participants selected to participate in the pilot project, which consisted of an introductory Zoom call, followed by a call for participants for each learning pathway. The librarians had two weeks to complete the learning pathway(s) they had chosen. Participants also received pre- and post-pilot questionnaires and a user experience survey.
For Dr Kaddu, who works as a lecturer at the East African School of Library and Information Science at Makerere University, CPD is critical, because she’s got to stay relevant to her students, who are a lot more digitally savvy than she was when she studied for the same degree. As she explains it:
"When you look at the information landscape today, you’ll see that it’s characterized by plenty, there is a lot of information available out there, so the question is, how do I navigate all this information?"
She also says that the webinars AfLIA has provided, as well as the digital skills it is supplying to support educators in their daily work, have been well received.
"They raise awareness of existing trends that we might otherwise take a while to get to know. AfLIA, being a continental voice, has been key in unifying all that is needed on the continent, there is one place to go for guidance on curricula, for example, and it’s been very useful."
In fact, Dr Kaddu, who completed the Adapt Open Content and Publish Using Open Content learning pathways, has taken these resources and worked them into her own curriculum, so when her publishing seminars with the masters and doctoral students come up, she is teaching them a lot of what she’s just learnt.
While Dr Osuigwe believes that much of what librarians learn during their formal education can become obsolete in five to ten years, Dr Kaddu reckons that sometimes it feels like three to six months. To counter that, she says:
"You must continuously learn and discover what is out there to make your work better, something that is going to complement what you are doing, to make your work appreciated, otherwise your learners will challenge you. Acknowledge that there is a gap, while you are teaching, and challenge your students to help."
Prior to the pilot project, Dr Kaddu had a vague awareness of OER, and the symbols representing the various Creative Commons licensing options. However, following these tutorials, she says a lot has now been clarified for her, and in turn for her students.
‘They were really awesome, they were well designed, the information was easy to find, the materials were very, very clear,’ she says of the tutorials, and although she only had to complete two of the three, she’s working on learning pathway one in her free time.
Like many others in her line of work, Dr Kaddu is mindful of the fact that ‘academics are supposed to publish’. She says knowing what she now knows, she plans to publish more and is advocating for open content.
"I really want people to put their content out in the public domain, so that it can be utilized. If we publish to a greater audience, who are available to comment on our work, we can only improve. When info is in the open, it attracts many benefits. I no longer want to have it ‘closed’ – that’s selfish, and it’s not taking Africa anywhere. We need to add on to the existing literature, content, and data we have. We want to promote our scholars."
It’s going to take some convincing though. Dr Kaddu says the initial reaction, amongst her students, to publishing using open access, is negative. She says, ‘we need to be into it, to participate in it and promote it, then they will appreciate it’.
Dr Ayanda Lebele is the Director of Library Services at the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST). She tells me that it’s impossible to talk about her professional self separately from her private self because ‘I’m passionate about librarianship, it’s generally who I am.’ While she has this in common with her colleagues from Nigeria and Uganda, there are other similarities in their approaches to work.
‘For it to be functional, and effective, it’s the people that matter the most,’ says Dr Lebele, describing her team of librarians or, as she sees them, her work family, at BIUST.
To this end, she has entrusted a lot of the processes around CPD to her team, directing them where necessary, but also letting them find their own way. That way, she’s constantly learning as well.
With regards to the learning pathways, she had 16 members of her team sign up for the tutorials. It was a challenge, as they were just going into lockdown in Botswana at the time, so there was the related anxiety, difficulty in adapting to working from home, and data and device limitations.
But she’s pleased to report that they succeeded and are still reaping the benefits. One of her team members, Winnie Jamara, was the self-appointed champion for the completion of the course work, while another, Barulaganye Hulela has taken the knowledge on board and applied it specifically to podcast development.
‘She adapts content we get from the open access platforms and uses it to suit the BIUST context, and to disseminate information to our audience, who we no longer interact with face to face due to COVID-19,’ Dr Lebele explains. ‘Through the pathways we did, we’re able to enhance our service delivery.’
Just as Dr Kaddu admitted that there was some hesitancy in her students adopting the idea of open publishing, Dr Lebele has seen a similar attitude from teaching academics at her own institution. She believes that, as librarians, they have some responsibility towards changing this mindset.
‘We see ourselves as knowledge workers,’ she says.
"We don’t just manage giving people information, we also manage how they participate in knowledge creation. We have a responsibility to help those who don’t have the awareness, to know their role is not just to be reading knowledge created by other people; they also have to package their own knowledge, so that somebody else may benefit from it in a context that best suits their environment."
Having completed the Adapt Open Content and Publish Using Open Content learning pathways, Dr Lebele is a great believer in the subject matter, but would like to see a more basic introduction to open licensing and OER. She explains further, saying we need to take a step back to where people are, bring them on board and build their interest. She’s concerned that ‘people don’t see the need’.
Dr Osuigwe shares this sentiment:
"People inherently want to learn, but the point is that sometimes you don’t know that something exists, and so, you don’t hunger for it. Once you’re curious to know what’s happening in your field, and you dig into it, you stir up that hunger to learn."
Finally, Dr Osuigwe chatted to me about motivation, what will drive librarians to complete these tutorials, and thus embrace this unique opportunity for CPD.
With reference to open licensing and OER, she says:
"This is an area that people do not know much about, and it’s also an area that will help librarians generate more resources for their user communities. Where they can go and learn how to collaborate with others and to create resources if needs be. That’s the motivation for me! I believe that in everybody there’s a curiosity quotient, there’s that element in everyone born in this world to find out what’s next. But you know, life kind of puts out the fire in almost everyone, so what we are trying to do is to reignite that fire to find out what’s next, what can be done, how can this be achieved. This is the adventure!"
If you’d also like to get in on the adventure and find out more about open licensing and OER, you can complete the learning pathways available here on the OER Africa website.
Related articles:
- How has COVID-19 highlighted the need for open access?
- How do I create a Community of Practice for Open Educational Resources?
- Do you want to communicate your research more widely?
- Access the OER Africa communications archive
[1] Leanne Rencken is an enthusiastic, happy person with years of experience in content creation, curation and publishing. She has travelled extensively across Africa, from Botswana where she grew up, to Nigeria, Kenya, Angola and beyond. She believes in the transformative power of great content, no matter the platform or product. Most recently this love of story-telling has led to her to pursuing travel, teaching English as a foreign language, and freelance writing and editing on a wide-range of topics.
What's New
Why might you want to publish your research in an open access journal? Open access journals use Creative Commons licences, which lay out the terms under which they can be used and distributed. Although most open access journals are highly respected and entirely legitimate, there are scores of journals that can be classified as ‘predatory’; they prey on the unwary who want to publish or to read a reliable article.
Introduction: Why is open access publishing beneficial to academics?
Why might you want to publish your research in an open access journal? Open access journals use Creative Commons licences, which lay out the terms under which they can be used and distributed. All Creative Commons licences require full attribution. Open access can benefit scholars because wider access to their research, enhances visibility and citations.[1]
Figure 1 shows some of the possible benefits of OA publishing, many of which are relevant to researchers around the world, including those in Africa.
Figure 1: Benefits of open access publishing
What are predatory journals?
Most open access journals are highly respected and entirely legitimate. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists more than 20,000 journals, many without an author processing fee:
Figure 2: DOAJ coverage[2]
The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in South Africa includes the DOAJ journals amongst its list of accredited journals. Academics, researchers, and librarians are sure to find a reliable open access journal on the DOAJ database or any of the others that DHET lists.[3]
Even so, there are scores of journals that can be classified as ‘predatory’; they prey on the unwary who want to publish or to read a reliable article.
What is a predatory journal? In 2019, a group of legal experts and publishers agreed on this definition:
"Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices."
Though it might seem straightforward, there are so many forms of predatory practices that this group of specialists had trouble agreeing on a definition to describe how predation manifests itself.[4]
Experts [5] believe that there are now more than 15,000 predatory journals, which promise:
- Peer review with a fast turnaround time.
- Low author processing fees—low in comparison to some of the top tier journals, but high in terms of what authors get for their money.
- Online publication and visibility.
- Indexing in platforms such as Scopus and Web of Science.
Figure 3: How to spot a predatory journal[6]
OER Africa has a free online tutorial on open access publishing, which includes suggestions on how to verify a journal’s legitimacy.[7] There is also a discussion in Open Knowledge Primer for African Universities on the ways in which DOAJ tries to ensure that the journals in its database are legitimate.[8]
All researchers are under pressure to publish to keep their jobs and become eligible for promotion. The pressure on African scholars is increased because they cannot afford the high publication fees some journals charge, and some may not be familiar with the steps necessary to evaluate journals.
Two researchers are quoted in a 2022 article in the Africa Edition of University World News to illustrate the dilemmas facing African scientists who must publish but have neither the funds to pay the APC costs of top-tier journals nor the knowhow to discern the legitimate from the predatory.[9]
One scientist, Euclides Sacomboio of Agostinho Neto University in Angola, had two articles published in disreputable journals. His preference would have been high-impact journals, but, as he told University World News:
"I earn US$500, and the article processing fee in reputable journals is about US$2,180. Where do I get the money without any support?"
Sacomboio added:
"To me, it was important to share my data. Worse, it was difficult to choose [where to publish] because some of these journals we call predatory have peer review processes."
The second scientist, Moses Samje of the University of Bamenda, Cameroon and a member of the African Academy of Sciences Chapter of Affiliates, was also taken in—this time because the journal’s focus was on research like his and because of the journal’s allegedly high impact factor. Samje said:
"The impact factor was quite attractive. It was too good to be true … We had to try and we submitted a paper and, in the space of 24 hours, they [the publishers] asked for the processing charge, which was getting way more affordable. In less than 48 hours, we received an e-mail [saying] our paper was online. I was quite excited."
Samje subsequently went online and discovered that the journal’s peer review process was not as it seemed; he believes that the journal is a sham.
‘Plagiarism, fraud, and predatory publishing’
The noted bioethicist, Arthur Caplan, wrote those words in 2015 and called predatory journals ‘polluting journals.’[10]
Although the points in figure 3 elucidate the major ways to identify a predatory journal, there are two additional strategies they employ. Predatory journals are noted for accepting plagiarized articles and those that have already been published elsewhere. Even though predatory journals may report that they check for plagiarism, they typically don’t.
A 2018 blog post in the Indian newsletter, The Wire, succinctly described the situation in India and gave examples. The authors wrote:[11]
"Fake journals and plagiarism in academics go hand-in-hand. The lack of peer review and a complete absence of quality checking provides a safe channel to publish plagiarised articles. It is therefore no coincidence that along with fake journals, almost all academic fields have also seen an epidemic of plagiarism."
Sometimes plagiarism is intentional; other times it is the result of a researcher’s lack of expertise on what the concept means.
It isn’t always easy to find specific examples of plagiarism. Science Integrity Digest is one source of information. In 2020, it reported on a clear case of plagiarism in which the work of the OstrowskiLab was stolen and published in a predatory journal.[12] In 2019 in the Journal of Nursing Scholarship, authors wrote about numerous instances of plagiarism in three predatory nursing journals.[13]
In South Africa, Professor Nicki Tiffin, a former researcher at the University of Cape Town (UCT) found that not only had she been plagiarized in a predatory journal, but her name had been stolen too.[14]
Unwary researchers are also trapped because some predatory journals have titles very similar to those of reputable journals. The three journals in the figure below all have similar titles but the similarity ends there.
What's in a name?
The first journal, Plant Physiology and Biochemistry is published by Elsevier, a reputable scientific publisher. The second, Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Physiology, is published by Longdom Press. Note it has phone numbers in Great Britain and in Spain and a registered address in Brussels. The journal is not included in any of the major indexing services that have quality controls, such as Web of Science, Scopus, or PubMed. The third, Journal of Plant Biochemistry & Physiology, is published by Omics, a publisher that was sued by the US Federal Trade Commission for predatory practices and ordered to pay a fine of more than $50 million.[15]
How to help researchers distinguish between the fake and the real
Above, we outlined several ways to determine legitimate journals from predatory ones. The two OER Africa publications we cited offer detailed help to students, researchers, and librarians.
Intellectual property rights, plagiarism, and referencing are taught in the Use of Libraries or embedded in the Use of English course, which is an integral part of the compulsory General Studies (GS) for first year students in Nigerian universities. However, the effect of the course on students has been found to be minimal.[16] Traditionally, African academic libraries run library orientation activities for new students. This window of opportunity could be widened to include provision of information packs or tutorials (online and physically) on information literacy, copyright, and plagiarism issues (including an introduction to plagiarism detecting software), as well as information about predatory journals.
Figure 4: AfLIA poster for use in libraries
Academic libraries can play an important role in raising awareness to the need to be wary of predatory practices. But universities as a whole should be engaged in preventing staff and students from falling prey to these journals. They can list the open access journals for which academics associated with their institution can use for purposes of promotion, tenure, and contracts. The DHET site discussed above would be a good place start. Supervisors can advise their PhD students about conducting a literature review without including predatory journals. Sarah Elaine Eaton of the University of Calgary wrote the following about the need of universities to support their students and academics against predation: [17]
"There are implications for mentors of graduate students and early-career stage academics, as well as for institutions as a whole. The issue of questionable conferences and publications is so complex that early-stage academics require support and mentorship to cultivate a deeper understanding of how to share their work in a credible way."
Dr. Eaton’s statement is valid around the world, particularly in circumstances such as Drs. Sacomboio and Samje described—insufficient funds to pay fees and insufficient guidance within the institution.
[1] See Sharing Africa’s knowledge through openly licensed publishing for more information on open access. https://www.oerafrica.org/content/sharing-africa’s-knowledge-through-openly-licensed-publishing
[3]See https://www.up.ac.za/news/post_3048195-the-department-of-higher-education-and-training-2022-accredited-journals-
[4]Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K.D. et al. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature, Vol. 576: 210-212. Retrieved from https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-019-03759-y/d41586-019-03759-y.pdf
[5]The Interacademy Partnership. (2022). Combatting Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences. Retrieved from https://www.interacademies.org/project/predatorypublishing
[6]European Pain Federation. (2021). How to Spot Predatory Journals. Retrieved from https://europeanpainfederation.eu/news/how-to-spot-predatory-journals/
[7]Lelliott, T. (2023). Publish Open Access revised. OER Africa. Retrieved from https://www.oerafrica.org/communication/publish-open-access/ - /
[8]Levey, L. (2023). Open Knowledge Primer for African Universities Revised and Updated Edition. Retrieved from https://www.oerafrica.org/system/files/12591/open-knowledge-primer-june-2023.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=12591
[9]Makoni, M. (2022). The battle against predatory academic journals continues. University World News. Retrieved from https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20221213224021432
[10]Caplan, A.L. (2015). The Problem of Publication-Pollution Denialism. Mayo Clinic, Vol 90(5):565-566. Retrieved from https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196%2815%2900190-1/pdf
[11]Raniwala, R. and Raniwala, S. (2018). 'Predatory' Is a Misnomer in the Unholy Nexus Between Journals and Plagiarism. Retrieved from https://thewire.in/the-sciences/predatory-journals-fake-journals-plagiarism-peer-review-mhrd-ugc
[12]Bik, E. (2023). Investigation finds ‘egregious misconduct’ by CUNY scientist. Retrieved from https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/07/28/plagiarism-in-chemistry-a-case-report/
[13]Owens, J.K. and Nicoll, L.H. (2019). Plagiarism in Predatory Publications: A Comparative Study of Three Nursing Journals. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Vol. 51(3):356-363. Retrieved from https://sigmapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jnu.12475 - :~:text=This focused study has clearly,evidence accurately to inform practice.
[14] Simon, N. (2023). Protecting research integrity from predatory journals. University of Cape Town. Retrieved from https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2023-11-09-protecting-research-integrity-from-predatory-journals
[15]Federal Trade Commission. (2019). Court Rules in FTC’s Favor Against Predatory Academic Publisher OMICS Group; Imposes $50.1 Million Judgment against Defendants That Made False Claims and Hid Publishing Fees. Retrieved from https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/04/court-rules-ftcs-favor-against-predatory-academic-publisher-omics-group-imposes-501-million-judgment
[16] Ogunmodede, T. A., Adio, G. and Odunola, O. A. (2011). Library Use Education as a Correlate of Use of Library Resources in a Nigerian University. Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). Vol.604. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/604
[17] See Sarah Elaine Eaton’s Resource Guide Avoiding Predatory Journals and Questionable Conferences. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED579189.pdf
Education systems around the world have traditionally been characterized by closed knowledge systems, overly prescriptive curricula, narrow conceptions of success, and a failure to fully empower teachers as facilitators of learning. A recent paper by Neil Butcher & Associates argues that a key reason for these issues is that many education systems are inhibited by complex policy environments that, likely unintentionally, impede learning and create educational closure.
Image courtesy of Michael Anderson, Unsplash, Unsplash licence
Education systems around the world have traditionally been characterized by closed knowledge systems, overly prescriptive curricula, narrow conceptions of success and achievement, and a failure to fully empower teachers as facilitators of learning. This inhibits their ability to develop a full spectrum of human learning capabilities amongst learners, especially in their formative schooling years. A recently published paper by Neil Butcher & Associates (NBA) argues that, while there may be various reasons for these issues, one critical problem is that many education systems are inhibited by complex policy environments that, most likely unintentionally, impede meaningful learning and create educational closure.
Education policies often create new rules that accumulate over time, giving rise to inefficiencies and unnecessary constraints that do not support (and often obstruct) learner success. One manifestation of policy complexity within education systems is the growing granularization and rigidity of the formal national curriculum, which has led to the proclivity to use standardized testing and high-stakes examinations as a proxy for learner success. This complexity has also eroded autonomy for teachers, constraining what they can do in the classroom and increasing the tendency to ‘teach to the curriculum’ (or, worse even, to the examination). Standardized testing and high-stakes examinations have also increased anxiety and tension amongst learners, parents, and teachers, who perceive a false equivalence between test performance and success in later life.
The paper argues that despite the diverse nature of education systems around the world, many share a common problem of complex policy environments. Increased use of standardized testing models and resulting curriculum rigidity does not lead to better quality education but can have a deleterious effect on learner achievement. As complexity filters down into the classroom, another consequence is that the teachers who are tasked with delivering curricula are increasingly constrained and disempowered by these central policies. The consequences of this are far reaching as they emphasize rigidity and closure in knowledge acquisition, leaving little space for substantive learner-teacher engagement, contextual adaptation, and discovery.
In response to these challenges, we can use the principles of open learning as a tool to reflect on policy complexity in education systems, including the extent to which a policy environment is facilitating openness or promoting closure. A useful mechanism to tackle policy creep and ensure that education systems are geared toward a broader definition of learner success is to adopt and systematically implement the concept of openness within education systems, which begins at the policy level. Prioritizing openness offers significant opportunities for teachers and learners to reclaim what happens in the classroom and become more engaged members of society.
Integrating open learning principles into policy discourse would be a step forward in reducing unnecessary complexity and closure within education systems.
African languages are vastly underrepresented in the global knowledge pool, even though scholars at Harvard University believe that Africa is home to about one third of the world’s languages. This week, we delve into how Artificial Intelligence can assist with African language representation, and some of the challenges therein.
Much has been written about Artificial Intelligence (AI), mainly in English, including by OER Africa.[1] English is the predominant language on the Internet, in research and publications, and in education. African languages are vastly underrepresented in the global knowledge pool, even though scholars at Harvard University believe that with between 1,000 and 2,000 languages, Africa is home to about one third of the world’s languages.[2]
Artificial intelligence (AI) can play an important role in mitigating these language challenges. Already, international search engines, such as Google, play a large role in using AI to translate English into African languages and vice-versa. Efforts are constrained, however, by the paucity of documents on the web written in most African languages. Additionally, networks of African researchers have become actively engaged in looking for ways to increase the data on the web in African languages, including documenting scientific terms in the African languages where no such terms currently exist. Such data will then be available for use by AI to improve access to African languages. Importantly, they are trying to grow the field of African AI researchers by building networks and finding AI language technology solutions.
Many of us think about Google Translate when we want to understand what has been written in a language that we do not understand. Google Translate is now supported in 25 African languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Bambara, Chichewa, Ewe, Hausa, Igbo, Kinyarwanda, Krio, Lingala, Luganda, Malagasy, Oromo, Sepedi, Swahili, Sesotho, Shona, Somali, Tigrinya, Tsonga, Twi, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu. Several of these languages are spoken across borders. The good news is that the number of them keeps increasing. The bad news is that there does not seem to be any one place to ascertain which African languages are covered; this can only be determined through searches within Google Translate. Furthermore, Google Translate uses machine translation, which is mostly accurate, but not entirely.
The Nigerian linguist, Aremu Adeola, uses an interesting example about why context matters in many languages, including Yoruba:[3]
"Most translations done by machines render some words wrong, especially words that are culturally nuanced. For example, Yorùbá words ayaba and obabìnrin have their meanings situated in a cultural context. Most machines translate both words as ‘queen.’ However, from a traditional-cum-cultural vantage point, it is essential to note that the meanings of ayaba and obabìnrin are different: Ọbabìnrin means ‘queen’ in English while ayaba is ‘wife of the king.’"
Using AI as a translation tool is not straightforward. Most AI tools:[4]
"Rely on a field of AI called natural language processing, a technology that enables computers to understand human languages. Computers can master a language through training, where they pick up on patterns in speech and text data. However, they fail when data in a particular language is scarce, as seen in African languages."
The South African science journalist, Sibusiso Biyela, gives an excellent example of just how difficult it can be to make scientific discoveries understandable and relatable in African languages, such as isiZulu. Biyela was given an assignment to write about the discovery of a new species of dinosaur, Ledumahadi mafube in isi-Zulu. He explained:[5]
"But there’s no word for “dinosaur” in Zulu. Nor are there words for “Jurassic,” “fossilization,” or “evolution.” Despite the fact that Zulu—or isiZulu, as the language is called in South Africa—is spoken by some 10 million people, it simply doesn’t have the words for communicating science.
So my news piece wasn’t just a news piece. It was an attempt to tell a science story in a language that science overlooked—to help right a societal wrong. It was a small contribution among an increasing number that aim to help decolonize South African science writing. And it was rife with more pitfalls than I could have imagined. The task of describing science clearly, concisely, and accurately—already challenging in English—became exponentially more difficult in my native tongue."
At the end of his article, Biyela gives a lexicon of some of the English-isiZulu scientific terms that he used. Biyela uses technology joined with his expertise in science for his work on conveying scientific terms from English to isiZulu. He was one of the partners in Masakhane, which is discussed below.[6]
The underrepresentation of African languages online makes it more difficult to use AI as a translating tool because computers have trouble identifying datasets with which to work. Several organizations are trying to mitigate this challenge, among them the Masakhane Research Foundation. Masakhane is collaborating with the African scientific preprint server, AfricArXiv,[7] to find a way to translate the papers that AfricArXiv receives into African languages.
Masakhane is a grassroots natural language processing (NLP) network that was formed for NLP research in African languages, for Africans, by Africans. The Masakhane community consists of:[8]
">1000 participants from 30 African countries with diverse educations and occupations, and >3 countries outside Africa. As of February 2020, over 49 translation results for over 38 African languages have been published by over 35 contributors on GitHub."
Masakhane has a trial translation page, but the translation results do not always match those of Google Translate. For example, ‘kisukuku’ is how ‘fossil’ is translated in Google Translate. ‘Mabaki ya Wanyama’ is the translation given by Masakhane. (Most online translations use kisukuku).
Figure 1: What is the correct translation?
These efforts are just getting started. If Africa is going to join the global knowledge pool, its languages must be represented too. Both AfricarXiv and Masakhane welcome volunteers; there are other such organizations that would also appreciate assistance.
And for those who are interested in the interrelationship between AI and library and information studies, the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) will host a webinar on this topic on 25 October 2023. Visit the webinar’s information page for more information.
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References and attribution
[1] July 28, 2023 https://www.oerafrica.org/content/three-ways-artificial-intelligence-could-change-how-we-use-open-educational-resources
[2] https://alp.fas.harvard.edu/introduction-african-languages - :~:text=With anywhere between 1000 and,third of the world%27s languages.
[3]Lost in Translation: Why Google Translate Often Gets Yorùbá-and Other Languages-Wrong. Aremu Adeola. Rising Voices. 20 November 2020. https://rising.globalvoices.org/blog/2020/11/20/lost-in-translation-why-google-translate-often-gets-yoruba-and-other-languages-wrong/
[4] A roadmap to help AI technologies speak African languages. 11 August 2023. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230811115430.htm
[5] Decolonizing Science Writing in South Africa. Sibusiso Biyela. 12 February 2019. https://www.theopennotebook.com/2019/02/12/decolonizing-science-writing-in-south-africa/
Image at the top of the article courtesy of albyantoniazzi, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA