By Dr.Henry Mwandemere, Vancouver, Canada.
Chinua Achebe’s highly acclaimed novel, “ Things Fall Apart” is a good illustration of Africa’s progress or lack of it after more than forty years of political “independence” from Great Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. African countries have yet to attain their highly anticipated and much publicized economic development potential. Why is it that the novel, translated into more than 40 languages world wide, sold millions of copies since its first publication in 1958, has yet to be read in many of the African indigenous languages?
Despite an abundance of natural resources base of land, soils, water forests and wildlife, Africa continues to be in an impoverished state, unable to attain its development potential. If anything it is falling further behind with each passing decade. Among the many and varied reasons advanced for Africa’s little or lack of development include, among others, the following: proliferation of wars and conflicts; weak governments, poor development policies; unsuitable use of natural resources; droughts; geographic position; diseases and pestilences; lack of rural infrastructure and service; and foreign intervention.
It is foreign intervention, in the form of foreign languages that has adversely impacted African development. Given that national development takes place in a context of linguistic and ethnic diversity, local and indigenous languages are important and necessary components of any sustainable development. Language is not only a means of communication and social interaction, but also a medium of education, a vehicle of cultural expression, and a symbol of nationality.
Language is as old as humanity and linguists have shown that the most ancient surviving languages are rooted in Africa. The world’s several thousand languages have been grouped into twenty or more linguistic families. Four of these, all African, bear only the most distant relationship with all the rest - Khoisan (spoken by the Kung San bushmen); Niger- Congo (the so-called Bantu languages); Nilo -Saharan (Maasai and other pastoralist languages) and Afro-Asiatic (Ethiopian and North African). All four families represent languages heard today in East Africa, close to sites were the oldest fossils have been found! There are an estimated more than 2000 languages spoken in Africa, with some languages still being discovered, according to Grimes.
Foreign languages were introduced to Africa with the arrival of foreign nationalities from Euro-Asia. The European interest in Africa was preceded by that of the Arabs and, unexpectedly, Chinese. Large quantities of African products reached China by the tenth and eleventh centuries. However it was the Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts of Africa in the 1400s that put the continent on the world map. According to J.D Fage (A History of Africa), the Portuguese exploration opened the way for a wave of European nations seeking to establish a way to the East Indies through the coast of Africa.
The Portuguese exploits in Africa had shown other European nations that there was profit to be made out of contact with Africa. It was during the nineteenth century that Africa witnessed an explosion of European scramble for colonies. The scramble, from 1876 to 1912, was ratified by the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, which culminated in the partitioning of Africa into thirty colonies, protectorates and 110 million Africans controlled by seven rival European countries of Germany, Italy, Portugal, France, Britain, Belgium and Spain. From then on, through the two World Wars, independence and the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1962 and the African Union (AU) in 2001, the official languages of communication for the African countries were those of the European colonial powers: English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Colonial education was responsible for the promotion of Euro-languages to the detriment of African languages and the resulting linguistic configuration that legitimized and produced the unequal division of power and resources between speakers of the former and those of the latter languages. The education systems inherited by post-colonial African governments emphasized Euro-languages as the predominant media of instruction and public communication.
Only a minority of countries south of the Sahara, Somalia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Sudan, and Eritrea have succeeded in extending instruction in African languages beyond the primary school level. Today in Africa, in particular south of the Sahara, it is inconceivable for one to be a Member of Parliament without competence in a Euro-language. It is unheard of for an African head of state who lacks command of the imperial language. Africa, the mother of humanity and language, now dependents on foreign and imperial languages for communication among its countries.
The African Union (AU) established in 2001 has fifty-three member states. It is the successor to the Organization of African (OAU), founded in 1962. Article 25 of the Constitutive Act of the Union states that “ the working languages of the Union and all its institutions shall be, if possible, African languages, Arabic, English, French and Portuguese”. While all African languages are considered official languages of the AU no African language is included among its working languages of three European and Arabic. Twenty, nineteen, nine, and seven of the 53 member states are classified officially as Francophone, Anglophone, Arabophone, Lusophone/Hispaphone respectively.
It is only Ethiopia that has an African language, Amharic, as its only official language. While Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, and Tanzania have two official languages, one African and the other European, the Comoros, Madagascar, Rwanda, and Somalia have an African language included in their three official languages. It is only South Africa that has eleven official languages, two European and nine African. The rest of the countries have only one or two European official languages: English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea are the two countries with the distinction of having only two European official languages, respectively, French and English and French and Spanish. Most African countries, including those with African official languages, rely on the Euro-languages as media for instruction in schools and as working languages at local and national levels.
The UNESCO Barcelona Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights of 1996 lists all the rights that should apply to human languages and communities that speak them and states, among other things, that “ overall principles must be found so as to guarantee the promotion and respect of all languages and their use in public and private. The Asmara Declaration on African Languages and literature of January 2000 states, among other things that:
(1) All African children have the unalienable right to attend school and learn their mother tongues and that every effort should be made to develop African languages at all levels of education.
(2) The effective and rapid development of science and technology in Africa depends on the use of African languages.
(3) African languages are vital for the development of democracy based on equality and social justice, and
(4) African languages are essential for the development of African minds and for the African Renaissance.
Article 2 of the Cultural Charter for Africa (1976) articulated by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) states that member countries should “ promote teaching in national languages in order to accelerate their economic, political, and cultural development”.
The African Union established the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) to promote the use of African languages. The vision and mission of ACALAN envisages empowering African Languages through:
1. Increased use of African languages in a variety of domains.
2. Immediate application of African languages by adoption as languages of learning and teaching in the formal and non-formal school system.
3. Use of African languages for information dissemination and for political participation to ensure grassroots involvement in the political process and demystification of the elite.
4. Collaboration between states sharing a common language to develop a bond of fellowship and interest to foster socio-economic and political integration.
5. Wider use of African languages to foster greater involvement of a wider segment of the population in development.
6. Projection of its Africaness through its languages.
The African Union made Swahili an official language of the Union, declared 2006 the Year of the African Languages (YOAL), and developed several programs and initiatives to promote and advance the use of African languages at national, regional and continental levels. It is hoped that through YOAL programs and initiatives African countries will focus greater attention on formulating and implementing language policies that will revitalize African languages and promote their use for instruction in schools and as working languages at local and national levels.
More than four decades after political “independence” the status of the African Languages leaves much to be desired. The widening inequalities in the fields of science, information and technology have been exacerbated. The imbalance between official languages and African languages, risks the involvement and inclusion of the African population not only in the process of policy formulation and implementation but also in improvement of their living conditions.
The African Union Charter for Cultural Renaissance of Africa, states that the “African countries should prepare and implement reforms for introduction of African languages into the education curriculum. To this end each state should extend the use of African languages taking into consideration the requirements of social cohesion, technological progress, regional and African integration”.
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the late president of Tanzania, lamented Africa’s failure of development and its inability to reach the village. He observed that “ while the West had been to the moon and back many times, Africa had yet to reach the village”. He translated Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the Merchant of Venice into Kiswahili, I believe, in an attempt to narrow the village development divide. It is hoped that through the African Renaissance, espoused by the African Union, African literature, written in African languages, will be recognized and translated into Euro-languages.
Photo: Dr. Henry Mwandemere.
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