Innovative Edge Session: Language and Lexicon

At the RINGO Learn­ing Fes­ti­val in 2022, RINGO Lab mem­ber Dr. Moses Isoo­ba (the Idea Car­ri­er) shared key learn­ings from devel­op­ing and test­ing the inno­va­tion: Lan­guage and Lex­i­con

How might we dis­rupt colonial/traditional per­cep­tions of capac­i­ty, knowl­edge and exper­tise, rather than per­pet­u­at­ing the nar­ra­tive of the north doing capac­i­ty build­ing ‘to’ south­ern civ­il soci­ety?

This pro­to­type address­es a key bar­ri­er to sys­tems change: lan­guage and inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It acknowl­edges that with­out mean­ing­ful lan­guage change, sys­tems change is like­ly to remain super­fi­cial, if at all. The use of neo-colo­nial, sex­ist, racist, big­ot­ed words and terms, and a reliance on dom­i­nant lan­guages, cre­ates and main­tains pow­er imbal­ances in inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment. This team is using AI tech­nol­o­gy to test whether we can shift pow­er in two ways: abol­ish prob­lem­at­ic lan­guage; and enable peo­ple to use their own local lan­guage when com­mu­ni­cat­ing with fun­ders and INGOs.

Watch the record­ing of the Inno­v­a­tive Edge ses­sion: