Nowadays the scarcity and dispersion of open-source NLP resources and tools in and for African languages make it difficult for researchers to truly fit these languages into current algorithms of artificial intelligence, resulting in the stagnation of these numerous languages, as far as technological progress is concerned. Created in 2017, with the aim of building communities of voluntary contributors around African native and/or national languages, cultures, NLP technologies and artificial intelligence, the NTeALan association has set up a series of web collaborative platforms intended to allow the aforementioned communities to create and manage their own lexicographic and linguistic resources. This paper aims at presenting the first versions of three lexicographic platforms that we developed in and for African languages: the REST/GraphQL API for saving lexicographic resources, the dictionary management platform and the collaborative dictionary platform. We also describe the data representation format used for these resources. After experimenting with a few dictionaries and looking at users feedback, we are convinced that only collaboration-based approaches and platforms can effectively respond to challenges of producing quality resources in and for African native and/or national languages.

In a context where open-source NLP resources and tools in African languages are scarce and dispersed, it is difficult for researchers to truly fit African languages into current algorithms of artificial intelligence. Created in 2017, with the aim of building communities of voluntary contributors around African native and/or national languages, cultures, NLP technologies and artificial intelligence, the NTeALan association has set up a series of web collaborative platforms intended to allow the aforementioned communities to create and administer their own lexicographic resources. In this article, we present on the one hand the first versions of the three platforms: the REST API for saving lexicographical resources, the dictionary management platform and the collaborative dictionary platform; on the other hand, we describe the data format chosen and used to encapsulate our resources. After experimenting with a few dictionaries and some users feedback, we are convinced that only collaboration-based approach and platforms can effectively respond to the production of good resources in African native and/or national languages.