The Casabanca Statement, 2005

A little more than ten years ago, the first PanAfrican Localisation (PAL) Workshop, held in Casablanca, Morocco on 13-15 June 2005, concluded with a short statement or declaration. I am reposting it here with the thought that a decade later, it is worth revisiting to measure how much has and has not been accomplished, and consider what might be next.

The Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC) funded the PAL project in 2005-08, followed by the African Network for Localisation (ANLoc) in 2008-11. Although ANLoc continues as a loose network, there is currently no organization or donor support comparable to what there was before.

The Casablanca Statement is included below in English and French - the two working languages of the workshop in June 2005 - as well as in Portuguese, Arabic, and N'Ko translations. There was talk of translations into other Africa languages, but as far as I know, no others have yet been done.

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Casablanca Statement

African localisation experts met in Casablanca in a workshop organised by Kabissa with Bisharat under IDRC funding, and in collaboration with MTDS and the Casablanca Technopark centre. The event benefitted from contributions from the Moroccan Minister-Delegate to the Prime Minister in Charge of General and Economic Affairs, the Canadian Ambassador to Morocco, and experts from other continents.

After three days of work, the participants in the meeting reached the following conclusions:

1. Limiting people to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in a foreign language tends to exacerbate the digital divide; makes ICT adoption long, difficult, and expensive; and impoverishes local culture.
2. Localisation makes ICT more accessible to everybody, including users from rural areas and young students, reinforcing the importance of our culture and helping us preserve our identity.
3. Localisation of ICT into indigenous African languages is therefore key to rapid and fair development in Africa.
4. For localisation to succeed and have its maximum impact in society, collaboration among governments, civil society, educators, linguists, computer professionals, standards organisations and development agencies is necessary.

We, the participants, commit ourselves to promoting this vision and working towards social development in Africa through ICT localisation.

Casablanca, 15 June 2005

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Déclaration de Casablanca

Des experts Africains en localisation se sont réunis à Casablanca lors d'un atelier organisé par Kabissa avec Bisharat, financé par le CRDI et avec la collaboration de MTDS et du centre Technopark de Casablanca. La rencontre a profité de la collaboration du Ministre délégué auprès du Premier Ministre chargé des Affaires économiques et générales du Maroc, de l'ambassadeur du Canada au Maroc, et d'experts d'autres continents.

Après trois jours de travaux, les participants ont conclu comme suit :

1. Restreindre les utilisateurs des technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) à une langue étrangère tend à exacerber la fracture numérique, rend l'adoption des TIC longue, difficile et onéreuse, et enfin appauvrit les cultures locales.
2. La localisation rend les TIC accessibles à tous, y compris aux utilisateurs ruraux et aux écoliers ; elles renforcent l'importance de notre culture et nous aident à garder notre identité.
3. La localisation des TIC en langues indigènes d'Afrique est par conséquent une des clés du développement rapide et équitable en Afrique.
4. Le succès et l'impact maximal de la localisation dans la société exige la collaboration des gouvernements, de la société civile, des professionnels de l'éducation et de l'informatique, des linguistes, des organismes de normalisation et des agences de développement.

Nous, les participants, nous engageons à promouvoir cette vision et à travailler au développement social de l'Afrique par le biais de la localisation des TIC.

Fait à Casablanca le 15 juin 2005

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Declaração de Casablanca

Peritos em localização de varias partes de África reuniram-se em Casablanca para participarem de um seminário organizado por Kabissa e Bisharat, financiado pelo IDRC/CRDI em colaboração com MTDS e o Centro Technopark de Casablanca. O evento teve o benefício de contribuições pelo Secretario do Primeiro-ministro Marroquino para Assuntos Económicos e Gerais, o Embaixador Canadense em Marrocos e peritos de outros continentes.

Após três dias do trabalho, os participantes na reunião chegaram às seguintes conclusões:

1. Limitar as pessoas ao uso da tecnologia de informação e de comunicação (TIC) numa língua estrangeira, por regra aumenta o fosso digital; torna a adopção de TICs um processo longo, difícil, e caro; e empobrece a cultura local.
2. Localização torna TIC mais acessível a todos, incluindo usuários das áreas rurais e estudantes jovens, reforçando a importancia da cultura própria e ajudando a preservar a identidade.
3. A localização de TIC em línguas africanas indígenas é consequentemente chave ao desenvolvimento rápido e justo em África.
4. Para que localização seja um sucesso e tenha o maior impacto na sociedade, é necessária a colaboração entre governos, a sociedade civil, os educadores, os linguistas, os profissionais de informática, as organizações de padrões e as agências de desenvolvimento.

Nós, os participantes, cometemo-nos a promover esta visão e a desempenhar esforços para o desenvolvimento social em África através de localização de TIC.

Casablanca, aos 15 de Junho, 2005

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بيان الدار البيضاء

التقى خبراء التطويع والتعريب الأفريقيون بالدار البيضاء في ورشة عمل تحت رعاية كابيسا (Kabissa) وبشارات بتمويل من مركز بحوث التنمية الدولي (IDRC)، وبالتنسيق مع MTDS والمنتزه التقني "تكنوبارك الدار البيضاء". وحقق هذا الحدث استفادة رائعة من المشاركات والإسهامات التي قدمها الوزير المغربي المفوض من قِبل رئيس الوزراء والمعني بالشؤون الاقتصادية والنواحي العامة، والسفير الكندي بالمغرب، بالإضافة إلى خبراء من قارات أخرى.

وبعد ثلاثة أيام من العمل، توصل المشاركون في الاجتماع إلى النتائج التالية:

• يؤدي قصر استخدام الفرد لتكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات (ICT) على لغة أجنبية دون اللغة المحلية إلى تفاقم الفجوة الرقمية واتساعها، وزيادة الفترة الزمنية المستغرقة لنشر استخدام تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات وصعوبة تحقيق ذلك مع ارتفاع في التكلفة، إضافًة إلى إضعاف الثقافة المحلية.
• يعمل التطويع والتعريب على إتاحة إمكانية استخدام تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات للجميع، بما في ذلك المستخدمون من المناطق الريفية والطلبة صغار السن؛ مما يؤكد على أهمية حضارتنا ويدعمها ويتيح لنا الاحتفاظ بهويتنا الثقافية.
• يعد تطويع تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات وتعريبها إلى اللغات الأفريقية القومية، بالنظر لما سبق، عاملاً أساسيًا للتطوير والتنمية بخطى سريعة وبصورة عادلة في القارة الأفريقية.
• يجب على كل من الحكومات والمجتمع المدني والعاملين بمجال التعليم واللغة، وكذلك محترفي الكمبيوتر وهيئات التطوير والتنمية والمؤسسات الرسمية التعاون والتضامن لإنجاح صناعة التطويع والتعريب وإتيان ثمارها على النحو المرجو منها.

ونلتزم نحن المشاركون بتعزيز هذه الرؤية ودعمها والعمل نحو تحقيق مزيد من التنمية الاجتماعية في أفريقيا من خلال تطويع وتعريب تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات.

الدار البيضاء، 15 يونيو 2005

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English & French versions came out of the Workshop. Portuguese translated by Mr. Rui Correia. Arabic translated by Dr. Adel El Zaim. N'Ko translated by Prof. Baba Mamady Diané (text was pre-Unicode).

Kamusi at 20: Keeping the vision alive and working

The Kamusi Project, which seeks to provide an open dictionary of all languages, for use in reference and in language technology development, is facing a challenge not unfamiliar to other language-related initiatives: Funding. This effort - sometimes perceived as too ambitious or esoteric but always visionary in its goals and use of technology - is currently campaigning for support through the Global Giving Open Challenge.

Kamusi was originally developed in 1994 as a proposal by Dr. Martin Benjamin and Dr. Ann Biersteker, then both at Yale University's Council on African Studies. Billed as the "Internet Living Swahili Dictionary," its objective was to respond to the need for new reference material on Swahili, and to do so by using the potential user contributions over the internet (this was more than 6 years before Wikipedia was launched). It is worth noting that a reason cited for exploring the internet medium for dictionary development was unfavorable "economics of Swahili publishing." Kamusi is still today an excellent Swahili resource (both monolingual and English <-> Swahili), even as its goals have evolved.

Kamusi was run at Yale, with benefit of US Department of Education funding, until 2006, and during this time was recognized as a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge 2001. At the end of this period, Dr. Benjamin - Martin to those who know him - summarized Kamusi in the context of African languages on the web at Wikimania 2006. He continued to run Kamusi as it transitioned in 2007 from Yale to a server hosted by the World Language Documentation Centre.

Under Martin's direction, Kamusi has since then been incorporated as a non-profit in the US and Switzerland (where he lives with his family), and has expanded its mission beyond Swahili to a pan-African and eventually global scope.

Funding from Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) for Kamusi, as part of the multi-member African Network for Localisation (ANLoc) project, enabled Kamusi to lead development of locales for 100 African languages (locale data facilitates computer software handling a language) and terminology for 12 African languages. Later funding from the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) enabled work on a pilot for Kamusi's multilingual model (basically, there's a lot more to a multilingual dictionary than words in parallel, since concepts don't line up neatly across languages).

Since the conclusion of major funding in 2012, Kamusi has continued work on the multilingual model, including how to annotate degrees of separation (when a concept is translated through another language), homophones, multi-word expressions (something I personally wish machine translation had been better at years ago), and data input from any language. In 2013 Kamusi's work gained it recognition as a launch partner in the White House Big Data Initiative.

Although Kamusi has an affiliation with l'École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) since last September, this has not filled the funding gap to enable completion of the programming work necessary to bring all of this to fruition and take the Global Online Living Dictionary (GOLD) from a proven pilot project to a full-scale reality.
 
Looking at Kamusi's history - which is long in internet terms - one is impressed by the thought and effort that has gone into it, by Martin and by a range of other contributors, from its beginning at Yale to recent collaborations and donors, with many individual contributions all along. It would be a shame if current funding difficulties would cause this important work to end.

For something like Kamusi, it helps, I think, to look as far ahead as we can look back. Twenty yeas from now, the advantages of building language resources for the many languages that don't have the economic or political/policy weight to get commercial and investor attention - even if they have demographic importance (keep in mind how quickly Africa's population is growing, for instance), but especially if those numbers aren't there either - will be a lot more apparent than they seem today. For countries where many of these languages are spoken, like most of those in Africa, there is a long-term need for projects like Kamusi that connect high level language technology with less-resourced and often low-status languages - and in Kamusi's case, also link those with the more widely spoken international languages.

At this point, Kamusi's effort to gain enough support to qualify for ongoing listing on Global Giving is an attempt to keep the organization going at a critical period in its history. Please consider helping.

Looking back and looking forward

For those who have read this blog before, it would come as no surprise that there has been a hiatus in posting followed by another post like this, breaking the silence. So with this I'd like to catch up and look ahead.

I last posted over three years ago, just before the International Mother Language Day 2010 - something I've paid attention to over the years. IMLD is also the occasion on which the winner of the Linguapax Award is given in recognition of "actions carried out in different areas in favour of the preservation of linguistic diversity, revitalization and reactivation of linguistic communities and the promotion of multilingualism." In 2013, Africa had another awardee, the Mauritian organization Ledikasyon pu Travayer (education for workers in Morisyen, the French-based Indian Ocean islands creole language of Mauritius).

However, last year, the first two (very distinguished) African recipients of the Linguapax Prize passed away - Neville Alexander of South Africa (Linguapax Award 2008) in July 2012, and Maurice Tadadjeu of Cameroon (Linguapax Award 2005) a few months later in December.

When I last posted on this blog in early 2010, Niger was in a muddle, politically speaking, and Mali was apparently a model; now Niger seems stable and Mali is recovering from a terrible year. I do not plan to spend too much time in this blog on issues relating to governments and conflict, though in some cases such issues will be hard to ignore. However the focus will continue to be on African languages and the "information society," along with related aspects of development and education.

2010

During most of the rest of 2010 I was based in Djibouti, and had the opportunity to follow up on and observe some US military civil affairs projects in northern Uganda and eastern Ethiopia. From the point of view of African languages, what was particularly interesting was to note aspects of training of community animal health workers in Oromo language (''Oromiffa'') in the Harari region of Ethiopia, and in Karamojong (''ŋaKaramojoŋ'') in Moroto, Uganda (my third trip to that country). While English was also used in both cases, the first languages of the trainees (Oromo and Karamojong) were central to learning. (I compiled a list of veterinary and animal terms in Karamojong, cross-checked with several references.)

2011

From late 2010 was back in the US with family again, and focused on different work and home priorities. In 2011 there were two conferences of note that had particular importance for applied work with African languages:

• Conference on Human Language Technology for Development (HLTD 2011), Alexandria, Egypt, 2-5 May 2011. This was organized by PAN Localisation and ANLoc, with support from IDRC and was hosted by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. In a sense, this consideration of human language technologies (HLTs; understood to include a range of applications for manipulating and transforming languages) for development is the logical extension of efforts to localize software and internet content. It will be a key area to follow in coming years.
• Action for Global Information Sharing 2011 (AGIS11), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1-2 December 2011. This was co-sponsored by the Localisation Research Centre and UNECA, along with others. Although technically not the first time for meeting of African language localizers with members of the localization industry, as a smaller scale meeting happened at the 2005 LISA Cairo conference almost exactly 6 years earlier), this was evidently much more significant in scale.

2012

One noted with great interest the efforts of Translators Without Borders (TWB) in early 2012, which included a translation center in Kenya.

In July, I personally had the opportunity to participate in Wikimania 2012 in Washington, DC, including the Tech@State event on "Wiki.gov." On the Wikimania proper side of things, there was a renewal of discussion concerning African language Wikipedias, including some discussion of potential links with a medical translations project (which not surprisingly has connections with TWB).

2013

In 2013 I've been working in Asia for the first time in half a decade, this time in Afghanistan, coordinating survey research. This has obvious multilingual dimensions here, many of which are relevant to multilingual societies elsewhere in Asia and Africa. An aspect I've been particularly interested in exploring is "cross-language qualitative data analysis," which surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly, given how language is often a secondary consideration in other areas of endeavor, even when an obvious factor) has only relatively recently gotten serious attention.

Although I have limited time for it, have begun working again with the material from the Fulfulde Lexicon (1993). This entailed converting old files in WordPerfect 5.1 format (not as hard as it might seem, but not straightforward). A major part of the object is to prepare to integrate the material in Kamusi's online platform.

So with that brief retrospective, I'd like to resume but with a slightly different approach here on out - ideally shorter and more frequent posts, pivoting off of items of interest from diverse sources ...

So, what about the last year?

Busy. Some work highlights:

• Vastly expanded the Pan African Localisation wiki (and that's still in progress). The idea with this is to develop a comprehensive information resource for people of a range of backgrounds approaching localization in African languages. First of all, localizers - people working on or planning a project for some aspect of localization in one or more African langauges. Also policymakers (ICT, language, and increasingly localization), development program planners, local activists, etc. It involves bringing a lot of information together (in many cases just basic with outlinks) and interlinking it. Localization to a certain degree involves bringing together of "previously unrelated skills, or matrices, of thought" (per the well known formulation of Arthur Koestler in another context some years ago) so this wiki is combining information on African languages and sociolinguistics, along with language technology tools, ICT4D information, mention of policies etc. In fact, all these "skils or matrices of thought" can also be understood as interacting parts of a larger "localization ecology," which is a concept I'm working on.


• Presented at and participated in "Regional Consultation on Local Language Computing Policy in Developing Asia" and "PAN Localization Project Phase II Meeting"meetings of the PAN Localisation Project, held in Thimphu, Bhutan in January. The PAN L10n project is funded by IDRC and has been particularly successful in facilitating localization work in several countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The discussion of "local language computing policy" involved representatives from several other countries in the region.


• Attended a one-day seminar on "Recent Experiences on Measuring Languages in Cyberspace" at UNESCO in Paris. This was on 22 February, the second day of a two day observance of "International Mother Language Day."


• Helped organize and participated in the "Pan African Research on L10N Workshop & Localization Blitz" held in Marrakech, Morocco in February 2007. This is another piece in IDRC's strategy to develop a network for localization in Africa. The workshop was organized by the Tactical Technology Collective - same organization that put together Africa Source I (Okahandja, Namibia, 2004) & II (Kalangala, Uganda, 2006) and the Localisation Dev workshop (Warsaw, Poland, 2004). Many of the participants also had been at the PanAfrican Localisation Workshop in Casablanca, Morocco (2005); three others and I came from the seminar in Paris mentioned above.


• Attended the 38th ACAL 2007 & 11th ALTA 2007 Conference held at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, US, in March 2007. This was an opportunity to connect with various people involved in research on and teaching of African languages. It has been my thought for a while that linguists and language instructors can be involved more with localization efforts.


• Submitted extensive comments on the Africa section of the "International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development" in May. More about this in a later post.


• Taught a distance course on "Language and Development Communication for the Payson School of Tulane University. This was an interesting challenge and opportunity to learn as well as teach. I hope I have the opportunity to give this course again.


• Continued to interact online with various people working on aspects of localization and internationalization. This is not really news though - have been doing this in one form or another for several years.

In Limerick (Luimneach) / recap of Dakar trip

I guess that the "journal" or "diary" facet of blogging would lead people reading this blog about a trip to Dakar and Limerick to expect a bit of a travelogue. In fact, there is much and not much to say. Moreover not much time to say it...

Nevertheless, I'm in Limerick (Luimneach in Irish Gaelic) - with a fast broadband cable access at the University of Limerick - and will have more on Shannon (Sionainn) and Limerick later, but will first catch up on Dakar.

One was immersed in certain realities of the city of Dakar for several days - unusually heavy rains and urban flooding; rides in beat up taxis, immersed in the fumes of badly maintained motors; feeling the heat and humidity; relying on "cabines téléphoniques" for phone communication; trying to situate myself with regard to places that I got to know a little in several visits in the mid-1980s. What makes it all worthwhile is the people and the sense of doing and learning something as I go. Would have liked to have time to get out into the countryside, but not this time. On this trip to Dakar - my first in almost two decades - I lost the sense of a center to the city, though it is there, and found some parts that I knew before seem to have deteriorated. On the other hand there is new building in various places in town as the city - like cities all over - spreads.

Re the taxis, the drivers' lot is a hard one, if for no other reason than the breathing of exhaust fumes constantly. There was a story about France and Britain putting an excise tax on airfares to help the poor. Well leaving aside questions about the effects of transportation taxes generally, one could make a case for some sort of surcharge on somebody to pay for health problems from this urban vehicle pollution. And while we're at it some program to alleviate the hidden tax of broken roads, which all vehicle owners and operators pay daily (and they're not all rich). And so on. Transporation is not so far removed from communication as a concern, but it is a bit offtopic here except that in town it was fundamental to getting to see people and visit offices. But enough on this aside.

Anyway, as previously mentioned, having shifted gears while in Dakar to staying with friends and not at a moderately upscale hotel, opportunities to connect were rather catch-as-catch-can. Did note among other things, that the going rate for most cybercafés here seems to be 300FCFA/hour (a little more than half a dollar and less than half a euro). Used one in Point E for an hour on the 8th; noted in the same area (where there are several offices I visited) that a power outage in the middle of the day (9th) simply put them out of action (the ones I saw were smallish - 2 to about 20 computers). Connected briefly at WARC (see below) but the speed was slow, and also using the ADSL connection at Charles Becker's office. Noted that the Sofitel in town has a good wireless conection on its lobby level (had to wait for someone there). The Meridian Président (fancier than Novotel or Sofitel) had a decent wireless connection but you have to pay 2000FCFA per half hour or 3500 for an hour (decidedly a worse deal than Novotel or Sofitel where the wireless connection was free). My hosts Anne Dodge and Chuck Kennedy have very graciously let me get on line at their place (but I was not able to hook-up to their ADSL connection because there was apparently some additional software necessary to connect via USB cable).

I will recapiltulate the past days in reverse chronological order as best as I can now, and return to today later... [this is still a bit rough and I need to edit/add some more later]

Avec mes excuses aux francophones, je ne vais pas tout traduire en français, juste les parties concernant la réunion Unicode/IDN.

Sun. 11 Sept.: Last day in Dakar

Finding people on the weekend is never easy. For this day I got in touch with Ibra Sene, a grad student at Michigan State (history) who is doing his dissertation research. The timing worked out ideally for me to meet him and several of the Michigan State faculty. However, after walking down to the hotel (Ngor Jambe) I found that the location had been changed. So via taxi (again after negotiations and not reaching agreement with the first 2 drivers) to the Meridien Président. There, saw Dan Clay (director of the Institute of International Agriculture at MSU) and Anne Fergeson (among other things director of the Women and International Development program there, both of whom I knew previously) and Irv Widder (director of the Bean-Cowpea CRSP) and ? who I had not met previously.

In the afternoon visited the Baha'i Centre back down in Point E. Hadn't realized it was so close to two other locations I visited in previous days. Saw an old friend among others, Aboubacrine Ba. Spoke Pulaar a little with them. This trip has had a lot of opportunities to practice my rusty Fula language skills.

Sat. 10 Sept.: More visits

Visited Sonja Fagerberg at the ARED office. It rained again as I headed down to that part of town. Interesting discussion of their work on publishing materials in African languages (notably Pulaar). Sonja, who did her linguistics dissertation on the Pulaar of Fuuta Tooro (mainly in Senegal), authored some instruction books on the language that I found very useful in my learning of Fulfulde in Mali and Pular in Guinea.For a number of years she has been working with the NGO "ARED" (Associates for Research in Education for Development) in Senegal. Aside from publishing a lot in Pulaar and other languages of Senegal, ARED has an expertise in education in these languages and the dynamics of publication in them. In fact she and others have completed a series of books in French about publishing in African languages.

One of the ideas that occurred to me (and there are many, such as pushing forward work on the Pulaar <-> English translator,

From there went to have lunch with Charles Becker, a researcher, historian, and longtime resident of Dakar. He also edits the H-West-Africa list. Gaelle Loir, a student of law and African studies, and currently an intern at the French embassy in Dakar, was also there. So discussions ranged over a number of topics related to Senegal and Dakar.

I called Ibrahima Thioub of the History Department at UCAD (he is someone that David Robinson and Ibra Sene of MSU know well), but unfortunately he was out of town. Found a number for Ibrahima Bob of OneWorld but the people answering said I'd have to call back on Monday. Unfortunate that it turned out that way but on the whole I think I had a pretty good percentage. (see earlier days, below).

Fri. 9 Sept.: Busy day

In the morning went down to Fann to see the West African Research Centre / Centre de Recherche Ouest Africain. I called Ousmane Sène and he was free so the timing worked out. We talked briefly about the WARC/CROA activities and future program. I also met Abdoulaye Niang who is the computer technician there. One of the things WARC is involved in is preparation of materials for the African Language Materials Archive (ALMA), of which I am on the board, so I took some time to discuss aspects of Unicode and WARC's hope to present ALMA documents in text format rather than only PDF.

After lunch tried again to get in contact with Ken Lohento of Panos-West Africa, but there was still a problem with the number - when I checked information (dial 12), which I should have done earlier, I found a slightly different number, but still no luck (it being Friday, they probably were off).

I had a meeting at IDRC/CRDI's Dakar office at 3, and discussed various aspects of their programs and also the PanAfrican Localisation project with A. Camara and Ramata Molo Thioune.

Following that tried to get in touch with Mme. Sylla, the director of the Digital Freedom Initiative in Senegal. Unfortunately she was already out, but I did get to talk briefly with her later on the phone. She was heading out of town on a trip, so no other possibilities of meeting.

I then got in touch with Tunde regarding meeting Ben Akoh. Ben had returned from a trip but was in a meeting on Gorée Island. Ben planned to come back later (Gorée is just a short ferry ride from downtown Dakar). In the meantime went out to the Sacré Coeur area to meet him and visit the West African Democracy Radio project headquarters. This is an interesting initiative financed by OSIWA to use radio for information and



Thurs. 8 Sept.: Heavy rain in Dakar; in town

It rained hard in Dakar in the morning of the 8th and for much of the day there was flooding on roads. Apparently there have been a few such heavy rains of late. In any event, the morning therefore provided an opportunity to catch up with some work. Also spoke with Mamady Doumbouya and Michael Everson re some aspects of the conference and their respective plans. Mamady plans to meet with some N'ko management groups in Guinea. Michael has some meetings of standards groups in Europe.

I had lunch with the Peace Corps country director, Malcolm Versel. I had corresponded briefly with him a couple of years earlier and he apparently worked with my former doctoral advisor, Jim Bingen, some years ago. Interesting opportunity to find out his perspectives on development in Senegal (he has been in and out of the country many times over the years) and learn about his approach to the PC program there.

Visited the OSIWA office in the part of town known as Point E (not far from the Universite Cheick Anta Diop, UCAD). Tunde Adegbola is working there on contract and introduced me to some of his colleagues including the director, Mme Tanko, and Mme Ly.

Wed. 7 Sept.: More on the Unicode/IDN meeting / plus sur la réunion Unicode/IDN

Some conversations and after the meeting 9/7 and at the dinner. Got to present aspects of the PanAfrican Localisation wiki to Adama Samassekou, in particular the language profiles. Spoke with him and others about aspects of localization.

Asked Anne-Rachel Inné about the situation in the north of Niger. She is from Niger, although based internationally. She had recently visited Niger and said there is some improvement but the price of millet is extremely high. Grain aid released on the market (which is often how it is done these days so as not to undercut local farmers who have produced grain) apparently assumed a high price very quickly (~30,000FCFA/bag) - higher even that rice, which is unusual. It is certainly tempting to say it is merchants who reap the advantage. On a broader subject, the importance of education for farmers and rural people generally (and the necessity of doing that in the farmers' first languages. This conversation brought in some other people too.

A quick note to conclude 2004. Currently I'm working on two items: a French language section for the 27th Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC27) in Berlin next April and a project proposal with IDRC that would seek to advance localization in Africa.

I continue to contribute to the lists listed in the left hand column - note in particular the A12n lists, Unicode-Afrique, and AfricanLanguages.

It is my hope to put more on this blog, since there is worthy news and I expect will be much more in 2005, but time constraints and access to this site are a problem...

In Warsaw now. The localisationDev meeting was a lot of work and a great learning experience. I'll be preparing a proposal for a workshop in Africa (March). Also working on proposals for the Unicode IUC27 conference in Berlin in April ...

"LocalisationDev Sprint"

Travelling to Warsaw for this short event. More as time permits to add it, and perhaps also some catching up. The webpage for the event is: http://localisationdev.org/

Niamey news

This blog is not for Niamey news, but since some folks may come across it with that expectation, I will mention a few items that have been in the news over the last half year or so.

1. Rains were good, and an early rain in Niamey was too big.
2. A fire in the artisan center in Wadata a few months ago destroyed much of the center.
3. Locusts. The return of a plague - not as bad there as in some other parts of the region, though, from what I've heard.
4. Presidential elections. The first round completed, the second to happen. I've been out of touch with the latest...