Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a hot area of research and application in the field of AI, but why should it matter to us as Africans? In this episode, we had a conversation with Salomon Kabongo KABENAMUALU, an NLP researcher at the African Master’s in Machine Intelligence (AMMI) which is a program under the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS). In this episode, you'll learn (with timestamps); 6:01 - What life is like as an African researcher.  8:39 - What Natural Language Processing is and why it should matter to us as Africans. 11:49 - Why Salomon chose to make NLP research as opposed to other areas of technology. 14:36 - The current state of NLP technology in Africa. 17:26 - The challenges surrounding the progress of NLP for African problems. 20:45 - Salomon's prediction on how long it would take researchers to overcome the challenges halting the progress of NLP technology in Africa. 23:42 - Steps being taken to make NLP systems "responsible" for Africans.  28:40 - Specific applications that NLP could be very optimal for that problems-solvers in Africa should be aware of. 32:00 - How these problem-solvers can leverage the *stable* progress in NLP and avoid getting caught up by the hype of the latest advancements. 35:35 - Pitfalls to avoid for African Data Scientists getting started learning and applying NLP to solve African problems. 39:40 - How global improvements in NLP in the coming years will affect how we apply the technology to solve African problems. 45:10 - Resources for Africans looking to learn more about NLP in the context of Africa. -- Salomon’s; >  LinkedIn >  Twitter >  Website -- > Learn from one of our guest facilitator’s (Aurélién Geron) workshop on “Natural Language Processing in Action Using Transformers in TensorFlow 2.0” here. -- LINK(S) MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE: Mashanke NLP Deep Learning Indaba Professor Julia's episode Salomon referenced during the podcast here. Speech and Language Processing (3rd ed. draft) by Dan Jurafsky and James H. Martin here. -- > Subscribe, download, and if you enjoyed the show, leave a 5-star rating for us wherever you listen to your shows. It will help others find the show. 📩 Share with your friends and colleagues as well that will gain from this episode. -- 🤝🏼Socials 💙Follow us on Twitter. 📺 Visit our YouTube channel.