Aligning with ACL 2022 special Theme on "Language Diversity: from Low Resource to Endangered Languages", we discuss the major linguistic and sociopolitical challenges facing development of NLP technologies for African languages. Situating African languages in a typological framework, we discuss how the particulars of these languages can be harnessed. To facilitate future research, we also highlight current efforts, communities, venues, datasets, and tools. Our main objective is to motivate and advocate for an Afrocentric approach to technology development. With this in mind, we recommend \textit{what} technologies to build and \textit{how} to build, evaluate, and deploy them based on the needs of local African communities.

翻译：与ACL 2022 关于“语言多样性:从低资源到濒危语言”的特别主题保持一致,我们讨论了非洲语言NLP技术开发所面临的主要语言和社会政治挑战。将非洲语言置于一个类型框架之下,我们讨论如何利用这些语言的细节。为了便利未来的研究,我们还强调了目前的努力、社区、地点、数据集和工具。我们的主要目标是激励和倡导以非洲为中心的技术开发方法。铭记这一点,我们建议根据当地非洲社区的需要,建立和部署这些语言的技术。