POTRAZ chief warns AI must support Shona, Yoruba and Hausa to protect culture

POTRAZ chief warns AI must support Shona, Yoruba and Hausa to protect culture

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Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) Director General Dr Gift Machengete has urged African governments and technology developers to prioritise indigenous languages in artificial intelligence systems, warning that the continent risks being marginalised in the global knowledge economy if its languages are excluded.

Machengete made the remarks in Victoria Falls while addressing the ITU Regional Development Forum for Africa 2026 and the African Preparatory Meeting for PP-26.

“A continent whose languages and values are absent from Artificial Intelligence systems risks becoming invisible in the future knowledge economy,” he said.

He said the current wave of large language models and generative AI is largely trained on English, Mandarin and a limited number of other global languages, leaving many African languages with little representation in datasets that power modern AI tools.

“We must ensure that Artificial Intelligence systems understand African realities, African cultures, and African languages,” Machengete said. “AI systems must speak and understand Kiswahili, isiZulu, Shona, Yoruba, Hausa, Amharic, Arabic, and the many indigenous languages that carry the identity, wisdom, and cultural heritage of our people.”

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Machengete argued that as AI becomes embedded in education, healthcare, government services, commerce and communication, citizens who mainly use indigenous languages could struggle to access services if systems cannot understand them. He warned that the risks go beyond access, extending to cultural loss through what he described as omission from emerging technologies.

“Language carries identity, wisdom, and cultural heritage,” he said. “If African languages are absent from AI, then African ways of knowing, African storytelling traditions, African proverbs, and African wisdom risk being erased not by conquest but by omission.”

He said Africa should treat language inclusion as part of digital sovereignty and called for coordinated continental action so that the region does not “arrive late” to global debates shaping the digital ecosystem.

The remarks come as African states discuss proposals on AI governance ahead of PP-26, with ideas reported to include funding for local-language datasets, requirements for AI systems deployed in Africa to support a minimum number of indigenous languages, and the creation of a pan-African structure to guide language inclusion.

Initiatives already underway include the African Union-backed Decade of African Languages (2024–2034), alongside national efforts in countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa to develop language datasets for AI training.

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