Day One at the Language Diversity Conference 2026: Conversations, Ideas, and Practical Lessons

The first global Language Diversity Conference opened in Accra on 2 October, bringing 82 languages into a single room. Over three days, more than 100 language activists, Wikimedia contributors, researchers and heritage workers are meeting under the theme “Strengthening Language Communities in the Open Knowledge Movement”.

The first day brought together language activists, Wikimedia contributors, researchers, educators, technologists, and community organizers from different parts of the world. Throughout the day, the sessions focused on a common question: how can language communities use open knowledge and digital tools while keeping their languages, cultures, and communities at the center?

You could hear the diversity of the languages within the first few minutes. Kristen Tcherneshoff, director of Wikitongues, delivered her welcome in many different languages! She left English behind and greeted the room in one language after another. English speakers followed along on the slides; everyone else listened for their own.

Her advice was simple: if you want to learn to pronounce these languages properly, go and find the people who speak them. “That was beautiful,” said the next speaker, and the room seemed to agree.

Why Accra, and why now

The conference is hosted by the Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub, Wikitongues and Wikimedia UK, together with the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group. Opening for the Hub, Wikimedian-in-Residence Tochi Precious described it as a maiden edition built on one belief: every language and every community deserves a place in the digital world.

Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Deputy CEO of Wikimedia UK, explained why the moment matters. Wikimedia UK has co-organised Celtic Knot, a regional language diversity conference, since 2017. Accra is the first time that work has gone global. Over three days, the programme, a mix of presentations, discussions, and practical workshops, covers:

• strengthening minoritized and Indigenous languages on Wikimedia projects
• technical and accessibility barriers to multilingual content
• the ethics of digitising languages and oral traditions
• AI, including both its promise and its harder questions
• partnerships with language activists who have not yet found Wikimedia

Sadik Shahadu, a member of the Language Diversity Hub and the conference’s core organising team, explained the choice of Ghana. The conference will be held every two years, moving to a different continent each time. Ghana was chosen for two reasons: visas are relatively easy to obtain, and it already has an active language community. The country has 11 Wikimedia language communities, and Dagbani is one of them. Ghana’s language communities have already met at their own national gathering for three years running, which made the country a natural first host.

The Wikimedia Foundation‘s CEO, Bernadette Meehan, sent a video message that opened with greetings in several languages. Wikipedia now exists in more than 300 languages, she noted, including Twi, Dagbani and Fante. Six new Wikipedias have graduated from the Incubator this year. Her central point was about the value of human work:

In an era of AI-generated content, human-created, community-verified knowledge in your languages becomes more valuable, not less.

Two Wikimedia Foundation Board trustees, Bobby Shabangu and Victoria Doronina, are also in Accra for the conference.

“Being spoken is not the same as being digitally relevant” 

The first keynote came from Professor Samuel Alhassan Issah, Dean of the Faculty of Ghanaian Languages Education at the University of Education, Winneba. Inviting him to speak on the topic, he warned the room, was like asking a madman to make an announcement: once he starts, he won’t want to stop.

He opened with a distinction. “I’m not talking about minority languages,” he said. “I’m talking about minoritized.” A language becomes minoritized because society makes it so, and even a language spoken by millions can be pushed to the margins.

Ghana has more than 80 languages, he said. Many of them are vibrant at home, in church and in the market, yet barely visible online. That gap is the real threat. “Being spoken is not the same as being digitally relevant.” He separated digital presence from digital vitality, and illustrated the difference by looking around the hall. Plenty of people were present in body, he joked, with their minds somewhere else entirely.

To get from presence to vitality, he argued, translation is not enough. Translating English articles into Ghanaian languages is valuable, but it cannot achieve knowledge equity on its own. Communities need to document their own oral histories, proverbs, naming traditions, ecological knowledge and performances. He singled out the Dagbani Wikimedians for doing this, documenting their own cultural material rather than relying on English sources.

He named four interconnected gaps that hold minoritized languages back:

• representation
• resources
• capacity
• participation

Closing those gaps, he said, means communities must move from being consumers of digital knowledge to being its creators, contributors and custodians. He also drew a line between contribution and agency: handing in recordings is not the same as deciding what happens to them.

He ended with a question for the room: where do we want our languages to go? Should they be maintained, sustained, or left to die along with the ideas they carry?

UNESCO: if AI benefits, it must give back

UNESCO’s keynote was delivered by Abdul-Hamid Yakubu, who leads communication and information at the UNESCO office in Accra. He spoke on behalf of Edmond Moukala, Head of Office and UNESCO Representative. Before he began, he asked the room to applaud 25 years of Wikipedia. It is, he said, living proof that collaboration can cross borders and that openness can build trust.

On AI, he was direct. Many AI systems are built on open knowledge created by communities like the ones in the room. “If AI benefits from knowledge, it must also help sustain it,” he said. Technology should strengthen the communities that create knowledge, not just extract value from them.

He framed the rest of his talk around the International Decade of Indigenous Languages and gave three messages:

1. Action has to be rooted locally. National plans are taking shape from Central America to Africa. In Ghana, UNESCO has been working with the Dagbani community.
2. The digital space must become truly multilingual. UNESCO launched a global roadmap on multilingualism in the digital era in November 2025, drawing on more than 100 experts from 53 countries. In one example, students in Malaysia added nearly 3,000 words from 25 Indigenous languages to [PLATFORM].
3. Alliances and investment need to grow. Indigenous peoples should set the priorities and lead the work, with partners and donors helping to scale what works.

Who owns the knowledge? Day 1’s sessions take it on

Revitalisation and Indigenous knowledge 

• One of the sessions looked at how Wikimedia can support language revitalization. The discussion brought together people with experience using Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and other Wikimedia platforms to support endangered languages or those with limited digital resources. The session explored how contributing in a mother tongue can support language learning, cultural engagement, and language transmission to younger generations.
  
• Another important discussion focused on the relationship between open knowledge and Indigenous knowledge. Drawing on experiences from Oceania, the session looked at the challenges of putting oral and culturally governed knowledge into open digital platforms. It raised questions around consent, cultural protocols, data sovereignty, and whether every form of knowledge should be openly available. 

Language communities in focus

• A session on Quechua examined challenges facing the Quechua Wikipedia, including representation of different varieties of the language, the quality and depth of content, and the role of native speakers in building a community-owned encyclopedia.
   
• The session also featured the Igala Wikimedia community. The session shared practical experiences of building and sustaining an Indigenous-language Wikimedia community through outreach, editing campaigns, partnerships, and capacity building.

Technology and practical skills 

• The Mozilla Common Voice workshop introduced participants to building voice datasets for minority languages. Using the Dagbani dataset as a case study, participants explored how communities can record and validate speech in their own languages and contribute to language technology development. There were also practical sessions on Wikivoyage phrasebooks, showing how communities can document useful expressions and make minority languages more visible to travellers and readers around the world.
  
• For communities facing limited internet access, another session introduced Internet-in-a-Box, a practical approach for providing offline access to Wikipedia and other open knowledge resources. The session looked at how offline access can support education, language preservation, and participation in Wikimedia projects.
  
• The program also included practical Wikimedia skills. Participants explored tools for translation, localization, and getting started with new Wikipedias, as well as ways of organizing and participating in Wikimedia events through CampaignEvents.

What stood out from the first day was the variety of experiences represented in the room. Different communities face different challenges, but many of the conversations came back to similar issues: community participation, access to technology, documentation, ownership of knowledge, and creating spaces where people can use their languages online.

Day One was therefore not only about presentations. It was also about listening to experiences from other communities, sharing ideas, and finding practical approaches that can be adapted to different language contexts.

As the first day comes to a close, the conversations continue. The discussions and connections made today provide a strong foundation for the sessions and activities that will follow over the next two days.

Taking care of participants

Beyond the sessions, we’ve also focused on making participants comfortable and safe throughout the conference.

Participants can grab coffee and small snacks from the coffee table located next to the breakout room during the day.

The chalet also has a quiet room for anyone who needs time away from the busy conference environment. Participants who need the room can ask the reception for directions.

The organizers have also put measures in place to respect participants’ privacy. Anyone wearing a grey lanyard should not be photographed throughout the conference.

For the evening, participants will gather for an outdoor dinner at Afrikiko for Ghanaian cuisine!

Safety and a welcoming environment remain an important part of the conference. The Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct apply throughout the event. Participants with a Trust & Safety concern can speak to volunteers wearing green lanyards or contact the Trust & Safety team at trustsafetyatlangdiv@gmail.com 

Day 2, here we come!

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.” ¬ Nelson Mandela.

Day One was about what it takes to reach the heart online, from voice datasets and offline Wikipedia to communities deciding for themselves what their knowledge looks like on the web. Follow along as we go into Day 2 on 3 October 2026.