June 15, 2026: Deadline for AI project submissions to LINGUA Africa
by Piyush Mathur
With a deadline of June 15, 2026, the LINGUA Africa initiative has issued a call for grant proposals from individuals and teams seeking to promote African languages across the Artificial Intelligence (AI) ecosystem.
While it does not seem to have a dedicated website as yet, LINGUA Africa is backed by the Masakhane African Languages Hub, Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, the Gates Foundation, and Google.org. (Microsoft had previously noted the support of the British government for the initiative, though it is not mentioned in the current grant call.)
Masakhane’s website notes that the current round will favour proposals focussing on ‘use-case–driven work in agriculture, education, healthcare, and civic services — across text, speech, and vision modalities — developed with communities and released under open licenses.’ The selected projects will receive ‘funding, funding, Azure and GCP compute credits, and technical collaboration.’
Given that these offers of potential support have not been quantified, it can be assumed that what is ultimately given will be proportionate to the selected project’s estimated needs.
Masakhane has put together a detailed and rather elegant portal for the entire application process, and entities interested in making their proposals should head over to it directly—and complete the application (via Submittable) by June 15, 2026:
https://www.masakhane.io/masakhane-african-languages-hub/grants
This is a digital poster circulated by Masakhane African Language Hub to advertise the grant call for LINGUA Africa. (Image credit: Masakhane)
It may be useful to note that Microsoft had mentioned in February 2026 its support for the LINGUA Africa initiative as part of its announcement of a decade-long USD 50 billion investment into the AI sector across the Global South.
In a February 17, 2026 blog post meant to coincide with the India AI Impact Summit 2026 (February 16-20), Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft and Natasha Crampton, Vice President and Chief Responsible AI Officer of Microsoft, had then noted that LINGUA Africa builds upon the lessons learnt from the LINGUA Europe initiative, which was also supported by Microsoft.