Comments on: Why Localization Matters

By: kachwanya

kachwanya — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:21:24 +0000

The only way for the Africans to start competing in the global stage is by encouraging the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurial. At the same time the locals embracing and using the locally engineered tech ideas. So i agree if it is meant for the locals it should be locally developed…Nice one

By: louis

louis — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:20:11 +0000

interesting post. i think localization should begin with language standardization. especially for English in Africa as far as i know only south Africa and Zimbabwe have local English standards. this will become very important when computers are used to draw contracts and agreements locally. i blogged about this a while ago
http://louismajanja.blogspot.com/2007/05/internationalization-and-localization.html

By: Miquel

Miquel — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:10:21 +0000

We've actually been running with full support for five languages on Maneno including English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Swahili. Shortly we'll have a Luganda and Lingala version as well. It's a necessity for our project as it's a blogging platform for Sub-Saharan Africa with the intent of finding some new, African voices out there to blog. Having it just in English would shutter everyone in Francophone Africa, which is a large chunk. It's important stuff. -miquel

By: AfroMusing

AfroMusing — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:42:50 +0000

@heather, will check it out.

@bankelele that is because you hide from the camera so you rarely get photographed! Or was that just at TEDGlobal? You should thank me for not paparazzi-ing you when I was home in Dec.

By: bankelele

bankelele — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:29:16 +0000

no wonder i don’t photograph well ;-[

anyway nice article

By: Heather LaGarde

Heather LaGarde — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:42:02 +0000

Very informative and great links – I think you’d be interested in the project we are working on with Youssou N’Dour http://intrahealth.org/open