Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
Google is adding 15 African languages spoken by more than 300 million people to its Voice Search, Gboard talk-to-type, and Translate dictation services.
Oromo, a language spoken by nearly 40 million people, mainly in Ethiopia, was added, along with Kikuyu, an indigenous Kenyan language with 8 million speakers.
Other languages added to Google Translate dictation include Burundi’s Rundi, Tigrinya and Amharic in Ethiopia, and Chichewa in Malawi, and Nigeria’s Igbo, Yoruba, and Pidgin.
Google’s managing director of Africa, Alex Okosi, said the additions would enable millions across the continent to “interact with the web with just their voice.”