Kilinux the Open Swahili Localization Project, is based in Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

 and run on Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, aims to create an operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 in Swahili

Swahili language

Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

, which is spoken by an estimated 100 million people. The project was started as a joint effort between the University of Dar es Salaam

University of Dar es Salaam

The University of Dar es Salaam is a university in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. The university was born out of a decision taken in 1970 to split the then University of East Africa into three independent universities; Makerere University , University of Nairobi and University of Dar es...

 and Swedish company IT +46.

The first major release by the project — Jambo OpenOffice

Jambo OpenOffice

Jambo OpenOffice is an open source office suite based on OpenOffice.org written for Swahili speakers and runs on Linux.Created by Kilinux it was released in December 2004 as JambOO.o....

 — is a localised version of OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...

, an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 office suite, and is aimed primarily at schools and colleges. Jambo OpenOffice was unofficially released in early December 2004, then later officially released on 28 February 2005.

On 15 June 2006 the project announced they had localised the web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

 Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...

.

The project won the best ICT project in Education award in the 2006 Stockholm challenge Award on 11 May 2006.

External links

• klnX: The Open Swahili Localization Project
• "First Swahili office suite released in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania" at Wikinews
  Wikinews
  Wikinews is a free-content news source wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. The site works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying "on Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an...