Nigeria-based IT consultancy firm Adamu Consulting, alongside the Internet USA and the ICT University of Louisiana, is offering a new phone technology called InternetSpeech that allows surfing of the Net in local languages.
Targeted at more than 100,000 illiterate farmers and traders residing in Nigeria’s rural areas, the technology will enable local users to transact business over the Internet in their local languages or with people of other languages via an inbuilt translator.
At the media presentation of the new technology held in the nation’s capital city of Abuja, the partnering organisations described the innovation as “the right tool needed to overcome digital and language shortcomings.”
The organisations added that with InternetSpeech, unlettered Nigerian users can now make use of the internet without requiring any form of formal education.
It is hoped that the technology will be of great benefit to Nigerian agricultural sector and small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs).
The head of InternetSpeech USA Emdad Khan said access to the technology is provided via any phone to get information on any website whether or not the site is voice-enabled.
InternetSpeech will also provide essential Internet features such as audio browsing, searching, sending and receiving emails, doing e-health, e-learning, e-commerce, and e-agriculture capabilities.
While describing how the technology works, the InternetSpeech head said the patented voice Internet technology operates via an intelligent agent that performs key tasks which include automating communication between a telephone and the internet thus extracting vital information from a website for the user.
