Tooling and Infrastructure

The tools a project uses shape what it can do and how reliably it can do it. For African-language data work, tooling choices are constrained by real conditions, namely tight budgets, intermittent connectivity, and distributed teams, so the right tool is rarely the most powerful one but the one the team can actually run.

Annotation tools

Choose an annotation tool by usability, scalability, and cost, weighed against the task and the team. Lightweight, self-hosted, or free tools often beat feature-rich paid platforms for a volunteer project, and a tool that works on modest hardware over a poor connection matters more than one with every feature. The companion tool AfriAnnotate is built for exactly these conditions. The annotation chapters cover tool choice for specific tasks in more detail.

Pipelines, deployment, and access

Automate the repetitive parts of the pipeline, such as cleaning, formatting, and validation, so they are consistent and reproducible rather than redone by hand each time. Decide between cloud and local deployment by weighing cost, connectivity, and data sensitivity, since sensitive or restricted data may be safer on local infrastructure under the community's control than on a foreign cloud. Throughout, apply sensible security and access control so that personal and sensitive data is seen only by those who should see it, which is part of the governance obligation, not separate from it.