The UNESCO Chair in Digital Technology Design with Indigenous people at the International Conference on Language Technologies for All (LT4All 2025)

From the 24th to the 26th of February 2025, Mr. Naftali Indongo represented the The UNESCO Chair in Digital Technology Design with Indigenous people cluster at the 2nd International Conference on Language Technologies for All (LT4All 2025), hosted at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.

The conference is part of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL 2022-2032) and the Silver Jubilee of International Mother Language Day, bringing together scientific and technological experts, policymakers, and representatives of linguistic communities to explore the intersection of language technologies and linguistic diversity.

During the event, Mr. Indongo delivered a presentation on “Leveraging Language Technologies to Promote Resilience: A Community-Based Participatory Approach to Reduce School Dropout Among Namibian San Learners.” as part of the work under the Resilience Project under the research cluster, which aims to promote educational resilience by exploring the role of AI systems such as autoregressive models (or LLMs), multilingual translation models, and emotion and facial feature detection to support as tools to reduce the issue of school dropout among San learners by creating AI-generated motivational cues to help them develop resilience and perseverance.

The conference provided a valuable opportunity to engage with linguists, AI researchers, and community advocates, emphasising the importance of inclusive language technologies in preserving indigenous languages and enhancing educational access.