World’s first African language e-mail engine

Yazmin Nanji (Kenya), Internet Entrepreneur. The CEO of the Nairobi-based MailAfrica, the world’s first African language e-mail engine, which in 2001 continued to create e-mail databases for various African languages. By October, among the languages taken into the Internet era were Oromo from Ethiopia, Hausa, Ibo, and Yoruba from Nigeria, and Ewe from Ghana.

Nanji was, at year’s end involved with a new, non-profit web site called AfricaLive, intended to create a virtual community across Africa.

This was more than just a business investment — it is the first serious attempt to adapt African languages and the African heritage to the 21st century world of information technology.