South Africa is home to roughly 30 living languages, and supports 12 official languages (including sign language), one of the highest official tallies in the world. According to Stats SA’s 2022 census, isiZulu is the most widely spoken, followed by isiXhosa and Afrikaans. Only 10% of locals speak English as their primary language.

This variety poses a problem for companies that want to use self-service chatbots. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini are stirring excitement for more engagement between people and chatbots. Yet, those forms of AI have drawbacks when it comes to grasping native languages and offering cost-friendly services.