Natural Language Processing Frontiers in African Indigenous Languages of Kenya: Challenges and Opportunities

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a critical area of computer science that aims to enable computers to understand and process human language. A systematic literature search was conducted using databases such as PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and Google Scholar. Keywords included 'Natural Language Processing', 'African Languages', and 'Kenya'. The review identified a limited body of work specifically focused on NLP for indigenous languages in Kenya, with only 15% of studies addressing this area. Despite the potential benefits, current research efforts are unevenly distributed across different languages and contexts within Kenya. Future research should prioritise methodologies that can be adapted to multiple African languages, particularly those spoken by larger populations. 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.