The project is a part of an international initiative formed as a taskforce and has gathered a multi-disciplinary team composed by members of the dept of Computer Science and the Institute of Swahili Research of the UDSM. The pioneering effort does not only aim to localize free and open source software into Swahili language, but also create awareness among Swahili speakers of the benefits of using and extending open source software, says Dr. Hashim Twaakyondo, the overall project coordinator. Dr. Twaakyondo who is also the head of Computer Science dept at the UDSM confirmed that “The Jambo Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3, the title name given to the second Swahili software has been released by his dept to the general public for internet use since early 2007. “It’s fully translated into Kiswahili language and runs on both Linux components and Windows XP” he says the efforts undertaken are part of the National Development Strategy.
Journalists at work during the inaugural ceremony of the new Kiswahili software known as "Mozilla Firefox program. The ceremony took place at Nkrumah hall at University of Dar es Salaam main campus in early 2007. Former second phase President Mzee Ali Hassan Mwinyi was the guest of honour.
According to him, they have already accomplished the whole process for making registration of the product into getting CVC account for the Fire fox Localization from a USA based Mozilla organization and the program is in full swing in most computers connected with internet in the country. According to a research assistant working on the project, Mr. James Chambua, they have acquired enough knowledge and skills from their scientific research works and studies at the UDSM of translating Linux operating system from one language to another. However, he says that, the project really helps in providing an effective knowledge in computational linguistic and that the work will help the future of Tanzanians in this world of science and technology by using their own Open Source Software (OSS). He says, the aim of Swahili Localization project since its inception was to destroy the existing language barrier in the country as most operating system and websites in Tanzania are in English language spoken by few Tanzanians an aspect that results into poor understanding of the information given on the web.
Analyzing basic problems incurred on the dissemination of the product, another project researcher, Kenedy Mwakisolwe, says that awareness is still not widespread over the use of the product among Tanzanians. But he is optimistic that its advantages will help most Tanzanians to have control of their own language that is commonly used for business as in other countries like Rusia, Japan, China, Brazil, German and France who use their own OSS. Apart from Kiswahili, other African languages enjoying similar advancements include Uganda’s Luganda, Kenya’s Kikuyu, Burundi’s Kirundi, Rwanda’s Kinyarwanda, Somali’s Somalia and Nigeria’s Hausa.
The proliferation of African languages on the internet is giving these languages a new breath of life though they cover 2 percent of the largest African indigenous languages to be online. Kiswahili will now be the third language whose software is made available in the internet.
The first ever release of the Swahili software the dept of Computer Science at the UDSM dealt with during phase one project is called “Jambo Open Office”. This is a release of an office suite in Kiswahili which has been developed on the free and open office 1.1.3 and is similar in functionality to Microsoft’s popular office programes. The developers released the product in October 2004 having overcome translation and infrastructure difficulties, and it can be installed in both Linux operating systems to support the East Africa language of Swahili in the internet and in Microsoft Office Windows.
The Kilinux team had the opportunity to demonstrate Jambo Office Software to enable Kiswahili users to create documents, presentations, drawings, design websites etc, based on Swahili language. The release is primarily focusing at Tanzanians as there are strong regional differences in Swahili usage, but the team worked with groups in Kenya to make modifications for Kenyan Swahili.
According to the Programme Technical Director of the Kilinux project, Dr. Alberto .E. Pascual, the aim of the project is to eventually have Swahili language software operating on thousands of computers at grass roots level, including primary schools and universities. Its designers describe it as a major initiative towards a full operating system in Swahili and it’s currently being used in most primary and secondary schools in Tanzania including institutions, colleges, government offices and at individual companies. Swahili is the most commonly spoken Bantu African language and it’s the chief trade language of East Africa, and conservative estimates indicate that is being spoken by over 100 million people in areas such as Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Malawi and parts of the horn of Africa and the Great Lakes Regions. ICT is the cornerstone of vision 2020 that aims to make Tanzania an exporter of services and ultimately making her the regional ICT hub in future. Limiting people to the use of ICT in a foreign language tend to exacerbate the digital divide. It makes the ICT adoption long, difficult, and expensive and impoverishes local culture. Efforts have just begun to make Kiswahili “internet and ICT ready” for the benefit of the community that speaks the language. It is arguably the richest language in the region in terms of culture, semantics and phonology. It is believed that the readiness of Kiswahili in ICT has a direct impact on the development of ICT in education, particularly in Tanzania where most government owned schools still use this language as a medium of instruction. All pupils taking primary education, except few in private schools learn all subjects in Kiswahili for seven years of basic education, making the language so critical in the implementation of ICT in education. However, this changes at higher levels of learning when the language becomes only a subject and not a medium of instruction in secondary schools and all higher learning institutions. On the other hand, the English language is taught as a subject in all public primary schools but becomes a medium of instruction in all subjects after the seven years of primary education. This system of education has been criticized in several forums but the government has refused to change it.
Open Source Software (OSS) refers to any program whose source code is made publicly and freely available for use and or modification.
Inherent in open source philosophy is the freedom of a distributed community of programmers to modify and improve the code. The most widely known example of open source software is the Linux operating system.
Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linux Torvalds as a University project in 1991. With the assistance of developers around the world, the software has grown into one of the most preferred operating systems today.
Developed under the General Public License, the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone making it easy for the free flow of queries and suggestions for both end-users and programmers. Unlike other similar software, there are no restrictions for copying and distribution of Linux, it’s instead encouraged for wider use, says a computer enthusiast and Software engineer and a US based ICT expert, Mr. Antoine Bigirimana.
Localization makes ICT more accessible to everybody including users from rural areas and young students who reinforces the importance of local culture and helping us preserve national identity. Localization of ICT into indigenous African languages is therefore a key to rapid socio-economic development in Africa. For Localization to succeed and have its maximum impact in a society, collaboration among governments, civil society, educators, linguists, computer professionals, standards organizations and donor agencies is necessary.
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