Abstracts of the contributions to the workshop.
Friederike Lüpke, Jules Mansaly
University of Helsinki · University of the Gambia
The movement to include African languages in AI systems has concentrated on the continent’s largest languages, while the vast majority of Africa’s 2,000+ languages remain extremely low-resourced. For…
Read moreKhaoula Stiti
Unaffiliated scholar
When researchers in African Studies reach for AI tools to document, classify, or analyse heritage, they inherit a problem that predates AI itself. This paper argues that the failures now emerging in…
Read moreJiayu Yang, Durgesh Nandini
University of Bayreuth
Research databases in African Studies accumulate rich metadata, including subject keywords, themes, geographic and cultural references, but much of this data remains largely isolated, making it…
Read moreLauren Coetzee
University of Luxembourg
African history before colonialism is not absent from the archive — it is dispersed across thousands of pages of travel writing, missionary records, and merchant accounts. Yet, African-authored…
Read moreOreen Yousuf
Uppsala University
_Ajami_ refers to African languages written in the Arabic script. The use of Ajami began in the 10th century and spread to various sociopolitical states across Africa. Both existing handwritten and…
Read moreRachel Maina
University of Wisconsin–Madison
AI-driven language learning platforms are expanding rapidly, yet their underlying pedagogical and technological architectures remain poorly aligned with the linguistic, infrastructural, and…
Read moreJohn Oluwafemi Daniel
University of Ibadan
Digital Humanities (DH) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have globally ushered in new possibilities for data visualisation, archival preservation, and public engagement with cultural heritage. Yet,…
Read moreIginio Gagliardone, Christine Mataranyika, Max Milella, Karabo Mohapeloa
University of the Witwatersrand
Calls to decolonise knowledge have transformed the discursive landscape of African higher education over the past decade. Movements such as #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall demanded structural…
Read moreSanjin Muftić
University of Cape Town Libraries
Heritage collections from the Global South face a compounding discovery problem. Sparse or inconsistent metadata limits findability, and the AI tools that could help address this gap are trained…
Read moreTajuddeen Gwadabe, Lydia Kila Taban
Masakhane
Africa is home to approximately 1.5 billion people, with nearly one billion speakers across roughly 50 major languages, and over 2,000 additional languages that remain significantly under-resourced…
Read moreLeonard Kibet Kirui
Moi University
For a decade, discourse on African research—from UNESCO's Open Science Recommendation to transformation strategies—has championed infrastructure, implementation gap remains: commitments rarely…
Read moreBruno Allahissem, Mirjam de Bruijn, Luca Bruls, Jelena Prokic, Matthew Sung
Leiden University
The field of digital humanities and computational social sciences is necessarily interdisciplinary. In anthropology, computation is still marginal, although computational means may advance…
Read moreFalimatou Pemgbou
University of Ebolowa
Ce travail est une exploration de la manière dont les émotions du personnage de Ramatoulaye, dans Une si longue lettre de Mariama Bâ, se construisent à travers les absences, les sous-entendus et les…
Read moreMohamadou Konaté
Joseph Ki-Zerbo University
Lorsqu’un chercheur burkinabè en cybersécurité cherche des données sur les incidents cyber touchant les infrastructures critiques de son pays, il ne trouve pratiquement rien. Les bases de données de…
Read moreAminata Kane, Augustin Ndione
Cheikh Anta Diop University
Cet atelier propose une réflexion critique sur la place des systèmes de connaissances africains dans les environnements numériques contemporains à partir du cas des manuscrits ajami, textes rédigés…
Read moreAugustine A. Farinola
University of Alberta
This paper emerges from a childhood shaped by African folktales, told through song, gesture, and moral questioning in familial and communal settings. Drawing on this performative tradition, I examine…
Read moreBenito Trollip, Sanjin Muftić
South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) · University of Cape Town Libraries
Barriers to research engagement in South Africa, including awareness of available resources, institutional support, and socio-economic factors, shape how scholars in the Global South produce and…
Read moreHammed Olalekan Lawal
University of Bayreuth
The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into African Studies offers transformative potential for cultural preservation (Olukoya et al., 2025; Ndede, 2026), yet it risks the “flattening” of…
Read moreEvelyne Amana
University of Yaoundé I
L’Afrique est un continent naturellement riche par sa diversité naturelle et culturelle. Elle se caractérise aussi par des regroupements ethniques qui utilisent des langues vernaculaires précises. Le…
Read moreSarah Oberbichler
University of Luxembourg
Read moreEliette Ngo Tjomb Assembe
University of Yaoundé 1
La traduction automatique des langues africaines peu dotées fait face à des défis qui dépassent largement l’ingénierie linguistique. Cet article s’appuie sur le développement d’un système de…
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