Open Call: Human Language Technology Projects 2025-28 (South Africa)

Duration 

• Funding is available for projects over a period of one to three years for the Financial Years 2025/26, 2026/27, 2027/28 and 2028/29.

Eligible Projects

• Proposals should cover the following:
  • Projects that develop language systems or applications that promote multilingual and multimodal communication in the public sector.
  • Projects that address language barriers affecting service delivery in government, healthcare, legal, and educational contexts.
  • Projects that improve access to information and services for speakers of African or marginalized languages through inclusive language technologies for the vision and hearing impairments.
  • Projects that are complementary to the Use of Official Languages Act (Act 12 of 2012).
  • Projects that produce assistive devices for people with disabilities.
  • Projects that provide solutions to IT related challenges.
  • Projects that develop resources that contribute to the Basic Language Resource Kits (BLaRKs) for South African languages.

Evaluation Criteria

• Factors that will be considered when evaluating the proposals include the following:
  • The practical importance and potential impact of the proposed project in terms of its support of the implementation of the Use of Official Languages Act.
  • Scientific/Development track record of applicant(s).
  • Contribution to the development of HLTs for all official languages of SA.
  • The alignment of the project to the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act No. 51 of 2008 (“IPR Act”), in terms of the applicant’s intentions to commercialize and/or use the project’s outputs to the benefit of the citizens of South Africa.
  • Incorporation of applicable international standards & best practices.
  • Releasing the basic resources developed under open-source license to license to the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR).
  • Evaluation of project outputs by an independent party to ensure quality and adherence to international best practices.
  • Value for money where cost consideration of the whole project life, quality in meeting a specification which is fit for purpose and sufficient to meet the public’s requirements.
• Proposals should clearly state the approach that will be taken, and the following should be highlighted:
  • Tasks to be undertaken;
  • Milestones and deliverables;
  • Licensing: details of outputs that will be released to the DSAC to be distributed under an open source license, and outputs that will not be released into the public domain.
  • Costing and budget;
  • Management and governance; and
  • Evaluation processes of the deliverables.
• Successful applicants will be required to enter a contract with the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture.

For more information, visit Department of Sport, Arts and Culture.