Nairobi, Sept. 13 -- Across Africa, the most consequential uses of AI do not look like a chatbot. They look like a forecast that warns a nutrition team months before a crisis, a satellite map that shows a planner how land use is changing, a drought assessment that reaches a ministry in time to act. Most of this work runs on data that has nothing to do with language: imagery, health records, weather.

Yet whether any of it changes a person's decision often comes down to language. One in six people worldwide has now used a generative AI product, according to Microsoft's 2025 AI Diffusion Report, and Africa has about 1.5 billion people and more than 1,500 languages, yet most AI models were trained mainly on English and a handful of other glo...