Lessons from Accra: Rossouw van Rooyen’s take on what the first Language Diversity Conference meant for Africa’s languages
The first Language Diversity Conference in Accra, Ghana, focused on the urgent need to preserve endangered languages and support digital representation for African tongues. Participant Rossouw van Rooyen highlighted the disparity in Wikipedia coverage for African languages compared to global counterparts.
Why it matters
The conference underscores the digital divide and the importance of preserving cultural heritage through open-source technology.
Early in the first Language Diversity Conference , Rossouw van Rooyen thought about a quote he had first heard eight years earlier.
At Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town, Daniel Bögre Udell of Wikitongues quoted Richard Henry Pratt . Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School , a notorious US boarding school for Native American children, and summed up its mission as “kill the Indian in him, and save the man”. Seeing Daniel again in Accra set the tone for Rossouw’s weekend.
“There are languages being eradicated, there are languages being suppressed all over the world which we need to save,” he says. He adds that the work is “going to be a never-ending quest.”
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