Initial fieldwork for LWAZI: A telephone-based spoken dialog system for rural South Africa

Tebogo Gumede and

Madelaine Plauché

Human Language Technology CSIR

Outline

• Introduction • Project Lwazi• Application selection • Selected application

– Visited communities– Source of information – Transport– Providers– Languages

• Discussion• Challenges

Introduction

• Growing interest in deploying spoken dialog systems (SDSs)

• South Africa is the leader in Information

and Communications Technology (ICT) in Africa

• Illiteracy – Population with no schooling stood at 10.3% in

2007 (StatSA)

Introduction

• Mobile phone use is widespread

• Challenge of accessing government information – opting not to access

• Introducing project Lwazi

Project Lwazi

• Lwazi IsiZulu for Knowledge

• Three years funded by DAC

• Telephone-based information system

• In language of choice - 11 official languages

Project Lwazi

• Nationally available - Through a single number

• Toll-free

• Some key outputs– TTS in eleven languages– Quality ASR– MA and PHD– Application selection

Application selection

• Key Informant Interviews, • Focus group Discussions • Community survey • Household surveys and • Workshops

– Morphological analysis – Application selection

The selected application

• Community Development Workers (CDW)– ‘Foot solders’ between government

services and communities, especially the rural poor

– Then follow up to ensure citizens successfully receive services.

• CDWs at work– example

Communities visited

• Rural • High unemployment• Old and technically challenged • Suitability of Lwazi system • User expertise of telephony• Source of information

Sources of government information

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Sources of information

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Mobile provider in communities visited

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Mobile providers

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Potential uptake

• Two potential areas–Community and government (easy

flow and cheaper and by-in)• Key is localised information

–Within government officials (they were excited about L potential)

Challenges

• Diversity of end users will require investment in time and resource to gather accurate information

• Ambitious (stakeholders, 11 languages)

• Not everyone in our targeted group will be excited about Lwazi.

THANK YOU www.meraka.org.za/lwazi