The Folly of Global AI Platforms: Or How We Built a System That Actually Works in Cameroon

The Problem We Were Actually Solving I still remember the call from our lead developer in Douala, Cameroon, who told us that the language model we'd deployed on a popular platform store wasn't working for a certain class of users. In Cameroon, a platform that works is one that uses the official language, French, or the lingua franca, pidgin English. Not the platform's dominant language, English. The platform's API, built with an offshore team in India, didn't account for the differences in lang...