The Yorùbá Names Project (officially registered as Yorùbá Names Lexicography Initiative in 2020) is a non-profit organisation with the primary goal of supporting efforts in lexicography, language advocacy, and language technology and development in Yorùbá, a language spoken by over fifty million speakers in Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Brazil, Cuba, and the Americas.
The overwhelming impetus of the organisation, however, is to make Nigerian languages more comfortable in the technology age by creating, curating, and supporting initiatives that help make technology compliant with Nigerian and other African languages. To do this, we are involved in language technology efforts, machine learning, natural language processing, lexicography, education, entertainment, literature, and others.
Our pilot project, the Yorùbá Names Dictionary at YorubaName.com, is the first free crowdsourced and open-source multimedia dictionary in Nigeria. But we have, since 2015, collaborated and done some pilot work in research, development and support for other Nigerian languages in technology. Because we believe that the development and growth of one language can serve as a model for other languages, our work is open-source and multilingual, giving required support to efforts in as many African (and other underserved) languages that need them as a way to help bring all viable tongues into the 21st century, facilitate inclusion, and empower users.