Latest news with #AfricaDay
The Citizen
a day ago
- General
- The Citizen
Community rallies to rebuild and extend Chrysalis Academy
In the Chartwell community stands a beacon of hope for unique children with a range of neuro-diverse needs, Chrysalis Academy. After a devastating fire decimated the property in October 2023, destroying the main dwelling and main storage facility on the property, the academy is not only striving to rebuild, but also to expand its crucial services. Nadia Brink, a mother of a student from Chrysalis Academy, is rallying behind a BackaBuddy campaign to support this exceptional institution. Also read: Douglasdale Police Station and Chrysalis Academy celebrate Africa Day Brink explained that for many parents, finding the right environment for a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a daunting journey, one she knows well. After years of searching and therapy, she finally found Chrysalis Academy, a place that offered her son a supportive and 'normal' learning experience. 'They assisted me by keeping in contact and helping me understand what I should do in trying situations. As a parent of an ASD child, you need all the help and information you can get,' she said. Chrysalis Academy's inclusive approach and small class sizes have helped her son thrive, sparking her desire to give back through a fundraising campaign to support the school's recovery and growth. Also read: Fun-filled holiday club prepares Crawford Lonehill Pre-Primary for term 3 Chrysalis Academy, led by Chuné Stucke, has served as a sanctuary for gifted and neuro-diverse children in need of learning support for the past 15 years. The school provides a safe space with small classes, with a maximum of 10 and a minimum of two children per class, allowing each learner to grow at their own pace. 'The intention behind the creation of the school was to provide affordable learning support for children with a range of unique needs in the greater Fourways area,' said Stucke. She added that the fire had left Chrysalis Academy facing immense challenges. As an independent school in a lower fee bracket, and no government funding, the road to recovery has been steep. Yet the spirit of the school remains unbroken. 'Parents are the ones who thought of the campaign to help raise funds for building a better future for our school. We wouldn't want to have to close the school because of finances, and, due to a rising demand for early years intervention, we would love to extend our facilities by adding a centre for early childhood development to our school.' Also read: Helping teens say goodbye to high school in style The BackaBuddy campaign aims to raise R50 000 to address immediate needs and expand the school's offerings, with funds going towards re-imagining, rebuilding, and replacing items in the school. These items include anything from desks and chairs to playground and sports equipment, as well as funding for the necessary learning materials and equipment for their early childhood development centre. This will support the school's mission to welcome more unique, gifted, and neurodiverse children. To support this dream becoming a reality, you can donate to this BackaBuddy campaign: or contact Stucke on WhatsApp at 083 308 0701. Follow us on our Whatsapp channel, Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok for the latest updates and inspiration! At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
The Citizen
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Citizen
St Teresa's Junior Primary turns wild for a day with PTA big walk
The grounds of St Teresa's Junior Primary School were abuzz with excitement on the morning of June 27 as girls from Grade 000 to Grade 3 participated in the much-anticipated PTA Big Walk. This year's theme, Wild Animals, saw the young Rosies don imaginative costumes and take part in a lively fundraiser that combined fun, fitness, and community spirit. Read more: Norwood residents Africa Day prayer walk for peace Despite a brisk winter morning, the girls arrived eager and enthusiastic, sporting sports kits accessorised with creative touches such as tiger tails, cheetah ears, animal print hats, and jungle-themed face paint. The event, organised by school staff and held during the school day, had the girls running, walking, hopping, and leaping their way through laps with determination and joy. The PTA Big Walk is a key fundraising event, with all proceeds directed to the Parent-Teachers' Association. These funds are used to support various school projects and purchase items not covered by the standard school budget. Staff members praised the event for fostering both physical activity and a strong sense of community among the learners. The successful day ended with smiles all round, leaving a lasting impression on the school and its learners. Follow us on our Whatsapp channel, Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok for the latest updates and inspiration! At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Mail & Guardian
06-07-2025
- Business
- Mail & Guardian
Digital technology must speak African languages
(Graphic: John McCann/M&G) Every year on 25 May, Africa Day is observed to celebrate the continent's strength and rich cultural heritage. But it is also a day that reminds us how far we still have to go. Across Africa, many still face daily struggles with unemployment, poverty and inadequate access to basic services. Less visible, but just as urgent, is another kind of inequality: language. As governments increasingly connect with citizens through digital platforms, millions are left out, partly because the technology does not speak their language. Africa is home to more than 2 000 languages and a vibrant linguistic and cultural tradition, yet its civic tech infrastructure remains stubbornly monolingual. In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) and digital tools increasingly mediate civic engagement, leaving out African languages in these platforms is both a technical oversight and a governance failure. Civic technology (civic tech) refers to digital tools used to promote citizen engagement, government transparency and public participation. From apps that track service delivery to platforms that allow people to report corruption and access public services, civic tech is important for participatory democracy. But what happens when the very people these tools are meant to serve and empower cannot understand them? The reality is that most African civic tech platforms are designed in English or French, the languages of former colonial powers. This excludes most citizens who are more comfortable in indigenous languages such as Swahili, Yoruba or isiZulu. In most cases, English is the default interface language, even in countries where only a minority speak English fluently. A key reason for this dominance is that English is the primary language of the internet, where most training data for language technologies used in digital tools comes from. Natural language processing (NLP), the AI subfield that allows machines to understand and generate human language, depends on large, annotated datasets. These are widely available for English but rarely for African languages, many of which are considered ' Tech developers often lack the training, tools or funding to build NLP models for these languages, especially when faced with the added complexity of dialectal variation, oral traditions and frequent code-switching. Another reason is that civic tech initiatives and efforts are often concentrated in developed urban areas, where English tends to be the main language of communication. This creates a situation where digital governance tools are more responsive to elites and uphold old hierarchies. The other barrier is institutional. In many cases, language inclusion is often an afterthought in civic tech development, with design decisions made by teams that do not consider the linguistic realities of the users they serve. This disconnect is worsened by the inadequacy of language policies or government mandates requiring digital platforms to support indigenous languages. As a result, civic tech ends up amplifying the voices of those already heard (urban, educated and English-speaking) while muting those on the margins. Take South Africa, for instance. It has 11 official spoken languages and the Post-apartheid reforms may have constitutionally elevated African languages, but digital systems have not caught up. Language inequity is being replicated in digital space, and this often results in diminished civic participation, poor service uptake and distrust in institutions. These problems are worse in rural areas, where literacy in former colonial languages is low. In Kenya, for example, citizen feedback platforms like Ushahidi have struggled to reach monolingual Swahili speakers. In Nigeria, digital voting education tools often exclude Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba, creating information asymmetries in the democratic process. In Ethiopia, the dominance of Amharic-based civic systems means that minority language speakers in Oromia or Tigray are digitally disenfranchised. There are growing efforts across the continent to localise AI and digital governance tools, and, equally, lessons to learn from these initiatives. The Masakhane project, for example, is a pan-African research initiative developing machine translation models for African languages. In Rwanda, Kinyarwanda-language platforms are being integrated into agriculture extension services, enabling farmers to get weather forecasts and pricing in real time. Open-source solutions are also important. Projects such as Mozilla Common Voice have crowdsourced voice data in several African languages. These community-collected datasets can help train AI and language technologies to understand under-resourced languages, bypassing the expensive proprietary route. As these efforts grow, so does the need to centre accessibility and inclusion from the very beginning of civic tech projects. Mark Renja, project manager at Code for Africa, Others in the civic tech space echo this view. 'We are quick to condemn inaccessibility in the physical space because it is glaring, but we are making the digital space inaccessible because we think it doesn't matter,' Professor Mpho Primus, co-director of the Institute of AI Systems at the University of Johannesburg, argues that the rise of the Fifth Industrial Revolution (a shift focused on ethics, collaboration and human-centred AI) provides a key opportunity for change. She explains that this new paradigm corresponds with Africa's pluralistic and multilingual societies, if we choose to embrace it. She notes that integrating African languages into emerging technologies would not only help bridge the digital divide but could also position the continent as a leader in shaping ethical AI development. 'The push toward human-centred AI requires linguistic inclusion to be at the forefront,' says Primus. Importantly, there is a strong case for governments to mandate the inclusion of indigenous languages in all e-governance systems. This includes local language support in digital identity systems, chatbots, mobile apps and voting education platforms. Multilingual support should not be viewed as a 'feature' but as a default standard, much like data protection or accessibility for persons with disabilities. Donors and international development partners also have a role to play. Too often civic tech funding is tied to short-term performance metrics (number of users, clicks or reports filed) rather than long-term inclusivity. But trust is the foundation on which civic tech succeeds and delivers. If marginalised communities do not trust the system or the institutions behind it, the technology will either fail or exacerbate inequalities. Language inclusion is one way to build that trust. A multilingual platform may be slower to scale in the short term, but it is more likely to foster trust, uptake, and resilience. Funders must be willing to back projects that prioritise inclusion over convenience, invest in research that improves the quality and availability of language data and support programmes that connect technology, governance and language inclusion. Finally, we must reframe language not as a barrier, but as an enabler. African languages are rich in nuance, metaphor and centuries of indigenous knowledge. When we include them in civic tech, we are making tools more accessible and meaningful. Imagine an AI tool that interprets a proverb-laden community feedback report in Tshivenda, or a chatbot that explains land tenure in Wolof using culturally grounded analogies. Those are the kind of tech that truly speaks to people. As AI becomes central to everything from taxation to public service delivery, the cost of exclusion will grow. Civic tech needs to be built with more voices at the table, especially from communities that speak lesser-known or low-resource African languages. A digital state that cannot speak the language of its people is a state that cannot hear them either. Nnaemeka Ohamadike is a senior data analyst at Good Governance Africa.
Asharq Al-Awsat
03-07-2025
- Business
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Saudi Arabia Pledges $25 Bln Investment to Support Africa
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday announced ambitious plans to scale up its diplomatic and economic presence in Africa, aiming to boost its investments on the continent to more than $25 billion by 2030, as part of a broader strategy to strengthen development and economic partnerships with African nations. Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Al-Khuraiji said the Kingdom intends to expand its network of embassies across the continent to more than 40 in the coming years, underscoring Riyadh's commitment to deepening its engagement with Africa. Speaking at a reception marking Africa Day at the Cultural Palace in Riyadh's Diplomatic Quarter, Al-Khuraiji revealed that Saudi Arabia would provide $10 billion in export financing and secure an additional $5 billion in development funding for African countries by the end of the decade. 'Africa holds a central position in the Kingdom's foreign policy and diplomatic outreach,' Al-Khuraiji said, noting that Saudi Arabia is keen to enhance cooperation in trade, integration, and multilateral coordination on shared global issues. He added that the Kingdom has already contributed more than $45 billion to development and humanitarian projects in 54 African countries. Of that, over $450 million was provided by the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center to support efforts in 46 African nations.
Saudi Gazette
02-07-2025
- Business
- Saudi Gazette
Saudi Arabia pledges $25 billion investments and opening more embassies in Africa
Saudi Gazette report RIYADH — Saudi Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Walid Al-Khereiji revealed that his country intends to increase the number of its embassies in African countries to more than 40 over the coming years. He also expressed Saudi Arabia's aspiration to invest $25 billion in Africa. Al-Kheraiji made the remarks while attending a reception marking the annual Africa Day commemoration, held at the Culture Palace in the Diplomatic Quarter in Riyadh. Al-Kheraiji stated that Saudi Arabia will finance and secure $10 billion in exports to Africa and provide $5 billion in additional development financing to Africa by 2030. "Saudi Arabia also affirms its commitment to developing cooperation and partnerships with African countries, expanding trade and integration, and enhancing consultation, coordination, and mutual support within international organizations on issues of common interest," he said. Al-Khereiji explained that African countries occupy a significant position on the country's foreign policy map and diplomatic network. "Saudi Arabia has provided more than $45 billion to support development and humanitarian projects in 54 African countries," he said while noting that the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief) has provided more than $450 million in aid to 46 African countries. The deputy minister emphasized that Africa is a continent of promising opportunities, with its natural resources, ambitious youth, and renewable potential. "Despite the challenges of conflict and climate change, the spirit of African cooperation and the aspirations of the continent's people for peace, justice, and development remain stronger than any challenge," he added.
