Sharing language resources for the benefit of all

Universities need to collaborate to meet the objectives of the Community of Practice for the Teaching and Learning of African Languages (CoPAL) of Universities South Africa (USAf), Chairperson, Professor Nobuhle Hlongwa, said at the first meeting of CoPAL for 2025, held online on 20 March. Hlongwa is the Dean and Head of the School of Arts: College of Humanities at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).

She said the point was to share the benefit of language solutions available at some universities, and not to duplicate efforts.

Professor Langa Khumalo, Executive Director of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) and a professor at North-West University (NWU), reported that SADiLaR had developed the game-changing LwimiLinks platform, set to empower language practitioners across South Africa. It includes access to free spell checkers, Write It — a multilingual academic writing support tool, and an Open Educational Resource (OER) Term Bank.

SADiLaR, he said, also has a Language Resource Repository which contains hundreds of items in multiple languages available to everyone through an open-access platform. Additional resources may be submitted to the platform for free access to others through multiple search options.

Dr Keaobaka Seshoka, Director: Languages at NWU, informed the CoPAL members of the Polokelo (“storage” in Sesotho) project. Polokelo is a repository of multilingual resources including glossaries, terminology lists and teaching and learning materials, such as videos. She said a newly released video guides users on how to use the resource.

Polokelo stems from the BAQONDE project, an initiative funded by the European Union to promote multilingualism. Four South African universities – NWU, UKZN, the University of the Western Cape and Rhodes University are collaborating with three European universities, Trinity College in Ireland, the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the University of Salamanca in Spain – on the project.

Core initiatives include the establishment of an inter-institutional network of African language development units (ALDUs) and the progressive creation of multidisciplinary materials in South African languages.

Dr Seshoka invited colleagues from other universities to contribute to the materials and to participate in capacity development for First Language Teaching and Learning in South Africa.

Dr Dolly Dlavane, Senior Lecturer at NWU, gave examples of three centres of African language teaching at universities – the Centre of African Language Teaching (CALT) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) focusing on Sesotho and isiZulu, the CALT at NWU promoting Setswana and the CALT at University of Cape Town (UCT) for isiXhosa.

“Institutions with CALTs must collaborate with others. UCT works with Rhodes University on isiXhosa and NWU works with Sol Plaatje University (SPU) on Setswana.” She, however, encouraged universities wishing to have CALTs to submit their applications to the Department of Higher Education for support.

Adding to this discussion, Professor Hlongwa mentioned that Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a growing role in teaching and preserving African languages and offers tools for language learning, translation and cultural preservation. She said new technology particularly addresses the challenges of data scarcity and linguistic diversity.

“AI is key in higher education. African Languages departments need to embrace it to ensure that they are not left behind.”

Professor Khumalo mentioned that the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC) was creating a national terminology policy. He asked whether CoPAL had been consulted in this regard. In response, Professor Hlongwa said CoPAL office bearers would check progress in this regard and offer CoPAL’s assistance to the DSAC.

Janine Greenleaf Walker is a contract writer for Universities South Africa.