Consultative engagement of stakeholders toward a roadmap for African language technologies

There has been a rise in natural language processing (NLP) communities across the African continent (Masakhane, AfricaNLP workshops). With this momentum noted, and given the existing power asymmetries that plague the African continent, there is an urgent need to ensure that these technologies move toward shared goals between organizations and stakeholders, not only to improve the representation of African languages in cutting-edge NLP research but also to ensure that NLP research enables technological advances toward human dignity, well-being, and equity for those who speak African languages. This study investigates the motivations, focus, and challenges faced by various stakeholders who are at the core of the NLP process. We perform structured stakeholder identification to identify core stakeholders in the NLP process. Interviews with representatives of these stakeholder groups are performed and are collated into relevant themes. Finally, a set of recommendations are proposed for use by policy and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers.