Nneoma Udeze’s Mission to Contribute to AI Solutions for Low-Resource Languages and Communities

Across the shining offices of tech hubs in Silicon Valley and London, Artificial intelligence is advancing unabated. Translation applications have become a quick way of translating text among the major languages of the world. However, to millions of speakers of Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, and hundreds of other African languages, the fruits of the AI revolution are not within reach.

Nneoma’s aim is simple and straightforward; to contribute to making sure that the benefits of artificial intelligence are accessible to those communities that are left behind by the fast rate of technological advancement. To her, it is not merely a matter of technology, it is personal.

“Someone’s grandmother may try to use a translation app or voice technology, and be denied access,” Nneoma claims. “Her language, her knowledge, her whole system of understanding the world, is not available in these systems. That is not a technical issue; it is a matter of respect and fairness.”
The figures are striking. While the English language, spoken by about 1.5 billion people worldwide, enjoys the full support of AI in almost every platform, other languages like Igbo, with more than 30 million speakers, find it difficult to even gain a basic representation in AI systems. This pattern is repeated across the region; rich linguistic traditions with millions of speakers get little recognition and research focus, compared to the dedication given to European and Asian languages.

Nneoma has made it her mission to contribute to filling this gap by operating at the nexus of digital technology, language, and public interaction. Her strategy is a blend of technical innovation and mobilization of communities by acknowledging that creating AI in low-resource languages needs to go beyond algorithmic solutions to include actual work with communities.
What sets Nneoma apart is her commitment and belief in grassroots solutions. Rather than introducing external structures, she collaborates directly with native speakers, linguists, and cultural professionals to make sure AI tools respect subtle meanings and culturally-based forms of communication. “You can’t just translate Western AI models and expect them to work,” she argues.

“Languages contain culture, history, and modes of thinking. Our AI solutions must be reflective of that depth.”

The implications of the work of Nneoma extend way beyond technology as such. Low-resource language AI systems can revolutionize the education system by rendering learning resources available in the native language of students. They can maintain the minority languages and cultural information to be used by future generations and enhance healthcare, emergency services, and access to government information.

Nneoma acknowledges that the path forward is not easy. The allocation of funds to NLP models of low-resource languages is disproportionately low in comparison to large language programs.

Technical issues keep increasing, such as processing tonal languages to complex word formation. Above all, there is the still ongoing challenge of convincing the technology sector as well as policymakers that investing in linguistic diversity in AI is a valuable investment.
However, Nneoma remains undeterred. “I look forward to a day when all speakers of an African language can communicate with AI as easily as English speakers do today,” she says. “We are laying the foundation now, one dataset, one model, and one community partnership at a time. This could take years but will have a lasting effect on generations. Our languages have a right to survive in the digital generation, and I am committed to make that happen.”