Researchers who have been trying to address this issue have recently released what is thought to be the largest known dataset of African languages.
"We think in our own languages, dream in them and interpret the world through them. If technology doesn't reflect that, a whole group risks being left behind," the University of Pretoria's Prof Vukosi Marivate, who worked on the project, tells the BBC.
"We're going through this AI revolution, imagining all that can be done with it. Now imagine there's a part of the population that just doesn't have that access because all the information is in English."
The African Next Voices project brought together linguists and computer scientists to create AI-ready datasets in 18 African languages.
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