Phone tech to enable rural Nigerians to surf the web in local languages

A phone technology called InternetSpeech could allow more than 100 000 illiterate farmers and traders residing in Nigeria’s rural areas to browse the web in local languages… using their voice and their cellphones.

Nigeria-based IT consultancy firm Adamu Consulting, alongside the ICT University of Louisiana, are offering the technology which will enable users to transact business over the internet in their home language or with people of other languages via an inbuilt translator.

At the media presentation of the new technology held in the nation’s capital city of Abuja, the partnering organisations described the innovation as “the right tool needed to overcome digital and language shortcomings.”

The organisations added that with InternetSpeech, Nigerian users can now make use of the internet without requiring any form of formal education. It is hoped that the technology will be of great benefit to Nigerian agricultural sector and small and medium-scale enterprises.

The head of InternetSpeech USA Emdad Khan said access to the technology is provided via any phone to get information on any website whether or not the site is voice-enabled.

InternetSpeech will also provide essential internet features such as audio browsing, searching, sending and receiving emails, and ehealth, elearning, ecommerce, and eagriculture capabilities.

While describing how the technology works, the InternetSpeech head said the patented voice internet technology operates via an intelligent agent that performs key tasks which include automating communication between a telephone and the internet thus extracting vital information from a website for the user.

This article by Paul Adepoju originally appeared on HumanIPO and was published with permission.