LIONESS WEEKENDER COVER STORY
Batazia, a business building language technologies enabling authentic translation of content into, from, and across African languages.
Barbara Gwanmesia is the Founder, President & CVO of Batazia – a Netherlands-based edu-tech startup that is dedicated to making reading, writing, and learning possible in all African languages, and to using AI and Machine Translation technologies to enable authentic translation of content into, from and across African languages. Barbara is also the creator of the Afribol snack that became a bestseller in The Netherlands' biggest food retail chain Albert Heijn to-go – raising thousands of euros for the maternity bills of women in Africa who could not pay their hospital bills. With a background in anthropology, journalism, and social entrepreneurship, Barbara has dedicated her life to seeking ways to change the African narrative in knowledge dissemination and poverty alleviation. She is also an author and a singer; and holds Masters and MPhil degrees in International Relations and African Studies, as well as a Higher Diploma in Journalism.
Lioness Weekender met with Batazia’s game-changing founder, Barbara Gwanmesia, to learn more about her business, its big vision, and its impact to date.
When did your start your business?
Though work began on & in the company in 2020/2021, Batazia got registered in The Netherlands in 2023 and today has created jobs for 20 people.
What does your company do?
We build language technologies that enable authentic translation of content into, from, and across African languages. This is in line with our mission to offer people in Africa access to universal knowledge in their mother tongues, and to make reading, writing, and learning possible in every African language. This means that we are also strengthening our protocol to codify or alphabetize oral languages… or to reduce oral African languages into written form.
What inspired you to start your company?
The idea of Batazia was born in 2020 when the biggest global online bookstore told me they could not sell any of the three ebooks in African languages that I had translated from English because the languages were not compatible with, or supported by their system. Those languages were isiXhosa, isiZulu and Kiswahili. Now Kiswahili is spoken by over 200 million people in Africa, how could Kiswahili not be in their silo of languages when some European languages spoken by as few as twenty thousand to thirty thousand people were in their repository of languages?
I was shocked. Not just because they said ‘no’ to these languages, but because the book was a transformative book that I was convinced would change many lives in Africa. Apparently, even access to knowledge that could change our circumstances in Africa was being denied us by people with the power to gatekeep access to opportunity – that was my take.
So I decided to start an online bookstore to sell books in African languages. But then it occurred to me, ‘How many of the people I wanted to reach in Africa were going to be able to afford the books I was going to be selling online?’. So I started investigating ways to bring valuable books and other sources of knowledge to people in Africa in languages everyone on the continent could understand and in a way that was affordable, logistically logical, and user-friendly.
That was when I discovered the painful reality of knowledge access and dissemination in Africa. It was when I discovered that up to 90% of Africans do not understand or can speak well the language of education and governance in their countries. That means hundreds of millions of people across the continent are cut out of the opportunities to access the knowledge or education to change their circumstances or fully participate in building their own countries. How do you ever get out of lack if you cannot access the information or opportunity you need to know how to do so in the language you understand well? I would come to the sobering and frightening realization that it was not just a bookshop selling books in African languages that was needed in Africa. It was something more fundamental… something radical. In other words, making access to universal knowledge, education, and information everywhere, to opportunities of skill building, to joining the political discourse, etc possible in every single one of the over 3000 languages spoken in Africa, including what people call dialects!
But how do you do that, when no one else has been able to do or even attempt it?
By telling yourself that if someone could make possible the light bulb, or the telephone, or the plane, or the ship when they all seemed impossible, then breaking down the barrier of language to accessing transformational knowledge and education was also going to be possible. I just had to first make up my mind, and determine that nothing would stop me… that I was going to find a way; and God would strengthen and help in the process. But practically, how?
Technology. I knew it would have to be technology. But I did not know what technology. All I knew was that I had a younger sister who knew something about technology. So I called her in the US and told her about what I had found and the document I was writing on it. My sister instantly caught on to the enormity of the problem. We then promised each other that this was going to be our life’s mission… making knowledge accessible to every African in the language they understood best.
We knew the cost might be much but decided that we would just have to trust God where the funding was concerned. The same attitude we took in how we were going to come up with the technology to make this seemingly impossible task possible. I personally totally depended on my younger sister’s natural brilliance, her double masters in different tech fields, her over 10 years of experience working in high-security tech environments producing household name tech products, and her natural propensity to teach herself or learn anything. She told me in 2021 (before the GPT blow-out) that it was going to take AI to do what we were planning to do, and that machine learning was going to be involved. Well, she did not just say it, she went into the field with everything she had.
In the process, we realized that we were both not the business minds we needed to build the company we needed to build, to make what we wanted to come realistically true. That is how we invited my son (who was a business strategist) to join us. He left his job and business and joined – also not knowing how we would survive, but believing totally in the proposition. In the last quarter of 2022, almost two years after the journey began with me, my sister, and my son, we got our first angel investor, our friend Emmie van Halder – who has now become part of our founding team. It has not been the easiest road, but we are grateful we were able to start it.
Why should anyone use your service or product?
Our strategy is not just to authentically translate content into, from, and across African languages, but to codify and reduce oral African languages into written form. That means we are not only translating languages from Western to African languages or vice versa but across African languages, and we are not only busy with translating and making knowledge accessible in African languages but making education possible in ALL (not just a few globally known) African languages. Our methodology is implementation not just research - though we are heavily research-oriented to stay at the cutting edge of language & knowledge AI.
Tell us a little about your team:
Barbara Gwanmesia (President & Chief Visionary Officer):
Writer, editor and social anthropologist. Award-winning novelist of ‘Vasona’s Secret’. A graduate of Webster University Leiden and Leiden University, has a Master’s in international relations and an MPhil in African Studies: Barbara's passion for improving living conditions in Africa has seen her pioneer various initiatives to change various status quo on the continent. The language 'crisis' as she describes the problem is for her a lived experience; and the reason she is now taking her place on the supervisory board to guide the mission and the vision from that bird's eye view - making sure the focus on the vision never veers.
Ndipabonga Atanga (CTO - Product and Development)
Ndipabonga is a Product Lead with 10+ years’ of experience leading digital innovation in the zero-carbon sustainable energy sector. A graduate of Sullivan University Louisville (KY) she has a Master’s in Information Technology Management and a Master’s in Analytics: For Ndipa, the challenge of language is also a lived experience and a state of affairs in need of such urgent change that for her too it is a life mission, not merely a state to correct.
Bengyella Gwanmesia (New CEO)
Entrepreneur and business marketing strategist. First to introduce an African street food concept at #1 Dutch supermarket chain, Albert Heijn. A graduate of Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, he has a Master’s in Finance & Investment: Bengyella's business acumen, and commercial, strategic & financial skills set him apart as a particularly gifted leader to carry the vision of Batazia forward.
Investor Relations: Emmie van Halder
Emmie was the first to believe in and invest in the Batazia project. With a track record in foreign direct investment, impact investment, funding solutions and international business development, Emmie is CEO of MPower International; and brings that wealth of knowledge to the Batazia effort.
Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?
I did not come from a strictly entrepreneurial family, but always felt the need to make a valuable contribution to a kinder and fairer world through some form of entrepreneurial journey. My son inherited that tendency, and so as he grew up, he started working with me at whatever I got involved in. So it is that he was with me when I started a magazine; was with me when we produced a snack that sold out several times over in The Netherlands’ biggest supermarket (Albert Heijn); and so it is now that he quit his business activities to join me in this venture of impact.
What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?
Build the most accurate translation technology for all African languages; and offer more and more stakeholders the resources to impact their customers, clients, public, and/or constituencies with our technology.
• Create the world's most intuitive knowledge base in all African languages, helping not only users directly but organizations, companies, and entities to serve their user bases similarly.
• Offer Africans and the world the fairest fastest and ‘funnest’ centre to access and discover any and everything ‘African Languages’.
I hope to see businesses and services spring to life because we exist… to see incredible changes in people's lives because they can access information, knowledge, and education in the language they understand best.
“In short, by digitizing Africa’s languages and enabling them for AI, we at Batazia seek to contribute to Africa’s transition into a digital and tech-enabled future.”
What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
Impact. Seeing a need fulfilled. Seeing my actions open doors for others.
What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?
Focus on the reason for your business. Focus fiercely on why you took that journey, and it will carry you in hard times. At least it will do so second to the power that formed your being: God.
To find out more, contact Barbara Gwanmesia via email: gwanmesia_barbara@batazia.com or visit the company’s website and social media platforms:
Website: https://www.batazia.com/
