Diary of an African Based Girl
Bridging the Gap: Making Onchain Information Accessible in Local African Dialects at the Grassroots.
About
Why are you participating for Based Africa? I’m participating in Based Africa because I see untapped potential in the region. Africa's total population is around 1.5 billion people, yet only about 130 million communicate in English fluently. That means only about 8.67% of the continent can access onchain information, leaving a massive gap in the onboarding process. With deep connections to the community, I understand these challenges firsthand. By translating Base contents into local languages and promoting blockchain adoption in local dialets, I aim to bridge this gap, empowering grassroots communities and ensuring Africa plays a central role in onboarding the next billion users onchain.
How it's made
What challenges are you focusing on? The main challenge I’m focusing on is overcoming the significant language barrier in Africa. With only a small percentage of the African population proficient in English, most people are excluded from the onchain economy simply due to a lack of accessible information. This creates a knowledge gap that prevents wider adoption at the grassroots. Through my contribution to the Base ecosystem, I’m addressing this issue by translating contents, blogs, tweets, and essential resources into Twi languages. This makes onchain knowledge and opportunities accessible to non-English speakers, empowering them to get onboarded onchain. By fostering inclusion and financial literacy, we’re opening the door for grassroots participation in the onchain economy, helping to unlock the vast potential across Africa, and overall contributing to the mission to onboard the next 1 billion users onchain. How does your submission address this challenge? My submission addresses the challenge of language barriers by making the onchain economy accessible to non-English speakers in Africa. The project involves translating Base’s blogs, tweets, and key educational resources into local African languages (like Twi), ensuring that people who don’t communicate fluently in English can still access the onchain economy and engage with blockchain technology. By localizing content, my project empowers individuals who were previously excluded from the onchain economy due to language barriers. Beyond my locality, this initiative can serve as a catalyst for a broader movement, encouraging multilingual individuals worldwide to localize onchain content in their own communities. This enables them to learn, participate, and benefit from onchain innovations. A good reference to this is a lady from Twitter who loved what I was doing and engaged with every post. She's from Nigeria, and her language is Yoruba. She even began translating content herself. Here's a link to one of her translations in yoruba: https://x.com/OlatundeKe15852/status/1845117483650363416 The potential impact is massive—by providing accessible information at the grassroots level, we can onboard more people into the onchain economy, fostering financial inclusion, innovation, and economic growth across the region. In the long term, this initiative could significantly contribute to Africa’s onchain adoption. Challenges we ran into 1. Language Complexity Translating technical blockchain terms into local languages like Twi was a major challenge. Many of these concepts do not have direct translations, making it difficult to maintain accuracy and clarity. Particularly when I was translating the blogs and including hyperlinks. Solution: I focused on simplifying the language while maintaining the core meaning. In cases where no direct translation existed, I consulted other native speakers that are older than I am - my mom. 2. Community Engagement Getting people excited about onchain technology in a community unfamiliar with it was challenging. Many were hesitant to engage with the content, as they perceived it to be too complex or irrelevant to their lives. Solution: I organized my first twitter space to talk about Base and the onchain economy, also the role that translation play. By tackling these hurdles, I’ve was able to push forward with my mission to make onchain information more accessible and impactful in my community.