The Rosetta Foundation participates in the GALA 2012 Conference

“Opportunities and Growth in Africa” was the topic Tunde Adegbola (alt-i) and Reinhard Schäler (LRC/CNGL and The Rosetta Foundation) presented to a packed audience at the recent GALA Conference in Monaco (26-28 March 2012).

GALA’s 10th Anniversary Conference attracted a record attendance of around 320 delegates. Their interest in the “hottest continent” was obvious. Seats were at a premium in Tunde’s and Reinhard’s session where they made it clear that ‘the next big thing’ is going to happen in Africa.

Just back from a software conference in Abuja (Nigeria) they had attended and a visit to the Fantsuam Foundation in Kafanchan, the session focused on the enormous energy and determination of Africans to use modern technology to address the requirements of their growing societies and economies – in their languages.

“We in Africa do not want to participate in a globalized world in which we have nothing to offer. We need to be able to speak to the world and the world needs to be able to speak to us”, said Tunde in his message to GALA which he delivered via video.

“While we still think about Africa as one of the poorest and most dangerous continents on earth, it is also the linguistically most diverse continent on the globe, the cradle of humanity and human language, the continent with the world’s fastest economic growth figures, and about to take off”, added Reinhard. He highlighted that over the past decade, six of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries were African; in eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan; with 600 million mobile phone users, Africa has overtaken America and Europe.

The GALA Language of Business Conference was the fourth annual Language of Business Conference hosted by the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA), an international non-profit association. It was conceived to bring together the global content delivery community, including providers of language services, managers of global content and language technology developers.

If you want to have a look at the presentation, click here.

You can find out more about the “Opportunities and Growth in Africa” session on our social networks and also on our website Therosettafoundation.org.