This AI tool is translating 2,000 African languages in a bid to boost local economies

According to its creator, 63 per cent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to global markets because of language barriers. "Over 52 native languages in Africa have undergone language death and have no native speakers," said Emmanuel Gabriel, founder of Germany-based OpenBinacle, the creator of OBTranslate, which was launched this month. "In the next five years, we hope to acquire thousands or millions of users to take up translation tasks on OBTranslate." The innovation resulted from an earlier messaging app that was built in 2017 to allow interaction in real-time translation of 26 African languages, but led to inaccurate outputs, Gabriel admitted. "We were very frustrated about the messaging app, and as a result we didn't want to come into the market with a bad product," added Gabriel.