ATC Partners with African Association of Language Companies

The ATC is proud to announce a partnership with ALCA, the Association of Language Companies in Africa.

Founded in 2023, ALCA is a platform and a community for fostering collaboration and elevating industry standards for language services in Africa, with values deeply rooted in excellence, cultural diversity, and integrity.

ALCA’s Founders and Board Members Christian Elongué, Ady Namaran Coulibaly and Johan Botha are united in their mission to forge a connected industry: “We are building ALCA from the ground up to promote the growth of language services companies in Africa and to facilitate knowledge sharing and best practices with a vision to build a resilient and thriving language services sector in the entire continent. Partnering with the ATC is a significant step towards that vision, and we look forward to our collaboration.”

Building a Bridge to African Markets

A key driver for connecting the ATC with ALCA is the growing interest in African markets within the UK’s exporter community. The UK’s 2025 Trade Strategy identifies the Global South as a core target for deepening growth and investment partnerships, with Africa as one of the regions to build stronger ties with. The UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) supports UK-Africa trade by fostering partnerships, facilitating investment in sectors like green energy and manufacturing, and providing market access support. The DBT connects British businesses with African opportunities through a network of regional offices and trade envoys, and beyond exports, the UK Government also supports British businesses to invest in Africa, with resources to manage risk, invest ethically, and access guidance on African countries.

But before, during, and after that happens, the UK’s language services industry has to be ready with the right partners, networks, and solutions to provide language services for African languages and to help lower the barriers to trade and investment.

ATC CEO Raisa McNab celebrates the meaningful new partnership: “The ATC is positioning itself and its members as the facilitators of international trade, and it’s hugely important that we are now able to confidently talk to our partners at the DBT’s Business Academy, Confederation of British Industry, Trade Association Forum, and Chambers of Commerce about how to leverage that 30% uplift on sales through language capabilities, and to bring our ALCA colleagues in to share their deep insights about how to use linguistic and cultural expertise to sell to Africa’s diverse country markets.”

For ATC member companies, the partnership opens up clear and tangible opportunities for expanding their service offering to encompass a wide range of African languages. From existing ATC member companies such as Thought in Motion in Botswana to ALCA’s founding members Bolingo Consult and Kabod Group in Ghana and Folio Online in South Africa, ALCA provides a sustainable way to build long-lasting, meanginful relationships with regional language service providers across the continent.

African Language Services Market Research

The African language services industry is changing rapidly and for the first time, ALCA is publishing a report focused specifically on what that change looks like across Africa.

Join ALCA for the official launch of the African Language Services Industry Report 2026, featuring insights from the ALCA research team led by Oumi K A R Elkindiy-Ferguson, Christian Elongue and Ady Namaran Coulibaly.

The report explores:

Industry growth trends across Africa
Opportunities and challenges facing African language companies
The impact of AI, automation and evolving client expectations
Business sustainability and profitability in the African language sector
The future of translation, interpreting and multilingual communication on the continent

Date: 3 June 2026 / Time: 16:00 GMT

ALCA Annual Conference 2026

ALCA’s annual conference explores how automation is reshaping language services and how it can be turned into measurable business value with the theme “Turning Change into Growth in the Age of Automation”.

Taking place on 27-28 August 2026 in Ghana, the conference is an opportunity for the African language services community to reframe the largely Western-centric industry conversation around AI as a business disruptor, and to map out how the extremely diverse African market can benefit from the power of unlocking linguistic access for the benefit of economic growth.