Natural Language Processing for African Languages in Tanzania: Challenges and Opportunities

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a critical component of modern data science and machine learning. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify existing tools and frameworks used for NLP in Tanzanian languages. The analysis revealed that while there is a growing interest in NLP for local languages, the development of robust models remains limited by insufficient data and technical expertise. There is a need for more comprehensive research into NLP tools specifically tailored to African languages. Investment should be directed towards creating annotated datasets and training programmes for Tanzanian language NLP. Model estimation used $\hat{\theta}=argmin_{\theta}\sum_i\ell(y_i,f_\theta(x_i))+\lambda\lVert\theta\rVert_2^2$, with performance evaluated using out-of-sample error.