Google adds 15 more African languages on Voice Search

Google has added 15 more African languages on Voice Search, typing with voice on Gboard and voice input on Translate.

Enabling voice input across these products offers approximately 300 million more people across Africa the freedom to interact with the web and communicate with friends and family using the modality that comes most naturally to many people: their voice.

Making a difference

Alex Okosi, Managing Director of Google Africa said this technology will make a difference to over 300 million more people across the continent.

“It will enable them to interact with the web with just their voice. With teams in Google Accra working on this, it’s one example of how Google in Africa is building technology for Africans – and the world”.

Matt Brittin, President of Google in Europe, Middle East and Africa speaking from Kenya said the next decade is set to be Sub-Saharan Africa’s digital decade – with more than half the population accessing the Internet for the first time.

“Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful – and extending Voice Search, voice typing on Gboard and voice input on Translate to 300 million people across Africa is a key landmark in that.”

ALSO READ: Google trends reveal South Africans keen to grow AI skills

Languages

These languages are spoken by an estimated 300 million people across West, East and Southern Africa. 

In West Africa, Google now supports Twi, one of the most widely spoken languages in Ghana, as well as 4 major languages of Nigeria, a country with over 500 languages and 218 million people. Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and Nigerian Pidgin are spoken by an estimated 129 million people, or around 60% of Nigeria’s population.

Google is also expanding its offering on Voice Search and Gboard in Kenya with the addition of Kikuyu, alongside Swahili, as well as for wider East and Southern Africa.

AI

It said the language extension has been made possible by advances in artificial intelligence specifically multilingual speech recognition – which converts speech into text.

“The AI model learns languages in the way a child would – learning to associate certain speech sounds with the specific sequences of characters in the written form.

“Multilingual speech recognition models are trained on data from multiple languages, and then can transcribe speech into text in any of those languages,” Google said.  

The next decade is set to be Sub-Saharan Africa’s digital decade.

For the first time, over half the population will have access to the Internet, while emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and the cloud could significantly accelerate the continent’s development.

Funding

Meanwhile, Google announced a further $5.8M in funding for organizations across Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

The funding will go towards equipping workers and students with foundational AI and cybersecurity skills, teaching teens how to use AI safely, and supporting nonprofit leaders and the public sector with foundational AI skills.

It is in addition to the $20 million already awarded by Google to nonprofits helping Africans develop their digital skills. 

Through another Google initiative, Grow with Google, the company trained over 6.5 million individuals in 2023 alone.

Google also provided funding to help organizations supporting local businesses, nonprofits and entrepreneurs. Through the Google AI Impact Challenge, Google.org funded the AirQo project – which uses AI to measure and tackle air pollution across Africa.

ALSO READ: Google Translate expands SA languages to include TshiVenda and siSwati