The EUATC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ALCA, the Association of Language Companies in Africa, signalling closer ties with the European and African language services industries.
Founded in 2023, ALCA is a professional association dedicated to empowering and expanding the language services sector across the African continent. With a mission to promote the growth of African language companies and facilitate knowledge sharing and best practice, ALCA has quickly established itself as the collective voice of a dynamic and rapidly professionalising industry.
Under the Memorandum of Understanding, the EUATC and ALCA commit to exploring joint projects of mutual benefit to their memberships, cross-promoting each other’s activities and events, and freely exchanging information and market intelligence between the two organisations.
A Market on the Move
The timing of the partnership could hardly be better. ALCA’s newly published African Language Services Industry Report 2026, based on responses from nearly 100 practitioners across 18 African countries, paints a picture of a sector in dynamic evolution where half of all respondents had entered the industry within the past five years.
The report’s findings challenge outdated perceptions of the African market. Over 85% of African language service providers already use AI and machine translation tools in their workflows, with 70% reporting a positive revenue impact from AI adoption. Far from being disrupted by automation, African LSPs are deploying it as a force multiplier for scaling their operations.
Why Africa Matters for European LSCs
For the EUATC’s national association members and their language service company members across Europe, the business case for forging closer ties with Africa is evident. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is creating new multilingual opportunities across cross-border trade, legal translation, culturally adapted marketing, and website localisation in a continent home to more than 2,000 languages. The report also identifies significant unmet demand for African language services in education, healthcare, and digital commerce, alongside rising interest from multinational companies seeking African language expertise.
For European companies supporting clients who trade with or invest in African markets, ALCA’s network offers a sustainable route to building long-lasting relationships with trusted regional language service providers across the continent.
Building Bridges Between Two Industries
The EUATC’s General Secretary Raisa McNab welcomes the new partnership: “Europe’s language companies will be increasingly called upon to support their clients’ growth into African markets, and that requires deep linguistic and cultural expertise that can only come from the African continent itself. This partnership with ALCA gives our national associations and their member companies a direct bridge to Africa’s language services community and gives our ALCA colleagues a gateway into Europe. The data in ALCA’s industry report speaks for itself: this is a professional, tech-enabled, growth-oriented industry, and we look forward to learning from each other.”
ALCA’s third Annual Conference, themed “Turning Change into Growth in the Age of Automation”, takes place in Ghana on 27–28 August 2026, an excellent first opportunity for EUATC members to connect with their African counterparts.
