Research Saturday Week 6: The Esethu Framework

​This week at Research Saturday by Datum Africa, we’ll be reviewing “The Esethu Framework: Reimagining Sustainable Dataset Governance and Curation for Low-Resource Languages” by Rajab et al. (2025).

​We’ll explore the Esethu Framework and its proposal for a sustainable, community-driven model for dataset creation; one where licensing revenues are reinvested into language communities, ensuring both ethical governance and long-term impact.

​Together, we’ll unpack what this means for the future of African data sovereignty, ethical AI, and sustainable dataset ecosystems.

• ​Date: Saturday, 15 Nov 2025

• ​Time: 5 PM WAT

• ​Paper: The Esethu Framework: Reimagining Sustainable Dataset Governance and Curation for Low-Resource Languauages (https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.1487.pdf)

​Join us to discuss how Africa can build data systems that sustain themselves and the people behind them.