This paper is intended to stimulate discussion about the creation of a standard for a community participation model of terminology development. It begins with a discussion of why the current state of terminology development in Africa brings forth the need for such a standard process. The paper then presents the outcome of an experiment in the development of ICT terminology for Swahili, as well as a subsequent project to incorporate the experiment’s results in the creation of terminology sets in African languages for multiple domains. A final section sets forth considerations for developing a community standard, particularly for contexts where no corps of professional terminologists exists. The proposed process is expected to deliver linguistically-appropriate terminology that will be acceptable to specialists and the general public, and will be adopted within a wide range of technical activities.