This is contained in a joint statement issued by the current President of WALS, Professor Lendzemo Constantine Yuka, and the Founder/Chief Executive Officer of OpenBinacle Group, Mr. Emmanuel Gabriel.
The West African Linguistic Society (WALS) is a professional group of scholars, researchers, field workers, and teachers who mainly come from the West African sub-region. Members primarily come from the Republic of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Togo.
The scholarly organization provides a platform for linguists, researchers, and scholars interested in the linguistic diversity and languages of West Africa to come together, share their research, and collaborate on various linguistic topics. WALS promotes the documentation, analysis, and preservation of the languages of West Africa, which is a linguistically rich and diverse region with hundreds of different languages. It also publishes journals, conference proceedings, and other publications that contribute to the understanding, revitalization, and documentation of the languages of West Africa.
OBTranslate® is a subsidiary of OpenBinacle Group®, a deep learning company that has developed an online CAT (Computer Assisted Translation) tool, Neural Machine Translation (NMT), and artificial intelligence (AI) platform for over 2,000 African and European languages ("OBTranslate"). It also aimed to bridge language barriers on the African continent and globally.