On 9 September 2021, Leiden University published an interview with me, focusing on the language and education side of my PhD Dissertation.
The interview is available at https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2021/09/different-languages-of-instruction-could-help-african-education-move-forward
The version in Dutch is at https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/nieuws/2021/09/210909-andere-voertaal-kan-afrikaans-onderwijs-vooruit-helpen
In the past months, I have given two online talks on aspects of my PhD Dissertation; I will defend the dissertation at Leiden University on 16 September at 3 pm. A pre-print version of it is available at Researchgate: ‘Language, Education and Identity in Africa‘.
The first talk I gave was on 8 June 2021 at the annual conference of the Special Interest Group ‘Language in Africa’ of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL). It can be seen here: Language Politics and Activism in Education: The Need for a New Line of Reasoning.
The second talk was on 9 June 2021 at the tenth World Congress of African Linguistics (WOCAL10), hosted by Leiden University. It can be seen here: Let’s Turn to Policy: a Challenge to Linguists. This talk was the last one in a series of talks in the “Let’s Turn to Policy” workshop that was part of WOCAL10. The workshop was organized by the Edinburgh Circle on the Promotion of African Languages (ECPAL), of which I am a founding member.
Some of the elements of the “Let’s turn to Policy” workshop were written up by me on the Stemmen van Afrika blog site in Dutch. A translation is below.
Language policy in Africa: still a long way to go?
WOCAL is congress that takes place every three years, one time on the African continent, one time elsewhere. After Cameroon (2012), Japan (2015) and Morocco (2018), this time it was the turn of the Netherlands to host the event, and more in particular the section of African cultures and linguistics of Leiden University.
One of the workshops that formed part of the tenth WOCAL in Leiden in June 2021 was devoted to language policy in Africa, with a focus on education. Many African countries lack a clear language policy; where it exists, language policy is often a de-facto continuation of the situation from colonial times. Almost everywhere, the former colonial language remains as the language of instruction, especially in secondary and higher education. The problems this leads to were eloquently discussed by the Tanzanian Dr. Martha Qorro. Speaking in Kiswahili, she explained in no uncertain terms why maintaining English leads to students not living up to their intellectual potential; it also leads to estrangement between children and their parents and more in general to a wastage of scarce resources in education. She argued in favour of a different approach, one that starts with using African languages as medium of instruction.
These thoughts were further explored in the workshop, which in three sessions looked at problems with current policy, at the situation in different countries and at changes that will be needed in future.
One of the improvements tried out in many countries consists of using the multilingual background many students have. Whereas in the past using the local languages was simply forbidden, these language are now permitted and being used in an increasing number of countries. By encouraging questions and discussions in students’ own languages better results can be obtained; it also makes learning the official language easier. However, that strategy, which certainly has not yet been universally implemented, has its own problems. Thus, in many countries there is no guarantee that teachers are posted to schools where they speak the local language. Thus, somebody whose mother tongue is Kihehe (from the South of Tanzania) could easily be posted to a school in the Northwest, where Kiha is spoken – and then children still cannot ask their questions in their own language. But what is more important: if the language of the exams does not change, that in itself will put students who are less gifted in language (or whose parents cannot afford to pay for extra tuition) at a disadvantage, possibly leading to them dropping out unnecessarily.
There are problems outside of education as well, as discussed for example by Endurence Dissake, who studied language use in courts in Cameroon. For example: there are Francophone judges who do not understand the English-based pidgin, and vice-versa. Because judges and others before the court do not understand one another access to justice is impeded and many types of misunderstandings may occur.
Therefore, a further step will be necessary in the direction of a language policy that leads to an increased use of African languages – although that will be far from simple. One of the countries that is somewhat ahead of the others in this regard is Morocco, where Amazigh (Berber) was given the status of official language a few years ago. As Yassine Boussagui showed, current policy fails in really offering equal opportunity to Amazigh and its speakers.
Matthew Harley discussed the complex situation in Nigeria, where over 500 languages are discerned. He suggested using the 16 most used languages in the country as languages of instruction. However, for the moment a scientific basis for such a choice and a strategy for its introduction are lacking.
Thus, many questions remained unanswered at the end of the workshop: how long can the current situation continue – when will it have reached its limits? What should be the principles justifying a choice for certain African languages? How can a transition be made in a way that is practical and just? In order to reach viable answers, a lot more work will be needed. Therefore, there is still a long way to go – it seems wise to start soon.
There is much talk on the need to ‘decolonize education’ in Africa. However, usually this restricts itself to calls for reforming the University curriculum. On 9 February 2021, I published a blog on the website of the ‘Africa Knows!’ Conference on this issue. In it, I argue that decolonizing education should go beyond decolonizing the University curriculum: it should start with a re-thinking of the educational pyramid as a whole. Instead of conceiving it top-down (as was the case in the colonial period), it should be re-thought bottom-up.
In order to do that, the role of indigenous languages as medium of instruction should be taken into account; they are now too often the ‘elephant in the room’.
Read the whole blogpost here: https://www.africaknows.eu/decolonizing-the-curriculum-is-that-all-there-is-to-it/
In addition, I gave a talk at the Conference on ‘Culture and Language – Empowering and Disempowering Ideas’. The paper it is based on is at researgate.net. The talk itself can be seen on Youtube – it runs from minute 20.54 to 30.50.
The talk was also the topic of a podcast interview by Roos Schepers in two parts: one and two.
This post is a translation from the Dutch original, which was published on 29 December 2020 at ‘Stemmen van Afrika‘ (Voices of Africa).
Comparisons are often made between Kenya and Tanzania, two neighbouring countries in East Africa. After independence, Kenya decided to follow a more western-oriented path; Tanzania opted for socialism. Since then, a reasonably functioning and decentralized multiparty democracy has developed in Kenya. In Tanzania, President Magafuli was criticized for manipulating the latest elections and for his centralizing tendencies. In the language area the two countries made different choices as well: in Tanzania, Swahili is the second national language; for example, the site of the government (tanzania.go.tz) is bilingual. In Kenya there is a clear difference in status: although in name Swahili has the same status as English, in practice English is the dominant language – the government website (mygov.go.ke) can only be read in English. Why should that be so?
The literature gives various explanations. One of them is found in history: for a while, Tanzania was a German colony and the Germans chose to promote Swahili, not German, as the trade language. In addition, there is the person of Nyerere, who had a powerful vision in which Swahili occupied an important position. Yet, those explanations are not fully satisfactory. Not much is left of Nyerere’s ideological heritage – yet by now, his choice for Swahili is uncontested. Are there no other, additional explanations? In my opinion, there is one explanation that is often overlooked in the literature, perhaps because it is just too obvious: for almost all Tanzanians, Swahili is an easy language to learn – but for many Kenyans, it is a different story. What is that story?
Both Kenya and Tanzania are multilingual countries. However, there is an important difference: for more than 98% of all Tanzanians, one (or more) of the Bantu languages are the first or mother tongue. Swahili is a Bantu language as well. In Kenya, that proportion is much lower: up to 70%. The other Kenyans speak languages that belong to the Nilotic or Cushitic language families. That difference matters. In order to understand that, a small excursion is needed first, to the United States.
It is well-known that foreign language education in the U.S. is generally not top-notch. Yet, the American diplomatic and secret services need trustworthy people who speak many different languages. That is why there is or was a training programme in the U.S. to teach people various languages. Through practice, the U.S. developed a classification of languages, from languages that are easy to learn (for Americans with a good language aptitude) to languages that are very difficult to learn. The differences are considerable: for the easiest language combinations, around 10 weeks of full-time instruction could be sufficient. For the most difficult ones, it takes more than 80 weeks. What this means for those less talented in language or for Africans instead of Americans has not been investigated, as far as I know. What this does illustrate is that the degree of difficulty of a language makes a huge difference.
Now, back to Tanzania and Kenya. In Tanzania, Swahili is an easy language to learn for almost all. That is not the case in Kenya: there is a large minority in Kenya for which Swahili is not a lot easier to learn than English. This explanation for the difference in the spread and degree of acceptability of Swahili between both countries is not found in the literature – but it could be more fundamental than the present, historical explanations. For the future, this probably means that Kenya will always remain a multilingual country: even if there would ever be a transition towards African languages, it will be a transition towards multiple languages. For Tanzania that is not so necessary. And yet: the 2% of Tanzanians that do not speak a Bantu language, around 1.5 million people, are being disadvantaged by the current Swahili-centred language policy. In future, a solution will be needed for those as well.
The ideas in this post will be further discussed in my PhD dissertation, ‘Language, Education and Identity in Africa’, hopefully ready for public defence in 2021.
My current activities are divided over two positions: at ActionAid and as PhD student at Leiden University. Recently, both were featured on the voertaal.nu blogsite. If you are interested in short info on my work for ActionAid one, take a look here.
If you want to know briefly what my academic interest is, check out this bit, but also the site of the Edinburgh Circle on the Promotion of African Languages.
Feedback always welcome… 😉
My posts are published now on Africa on the Blog. On June 8, a post was published with the title ‘Is Africa a country?‘ In it, I report on an article just out that tries to map existing cultural diversity in Africa. It shows that in many countries, national cultures are emerging. In other countries, however, this is not happening. Thus, there is not one picture that applies to the entire region.
Climate change is a ‘hot topic’ in more ways than one. I was able to contribute to the debate recently, in two different ways.
On 20 October 2018, I gave a talk at the study day of the Dutch Society for African Studies, giving a short presentation on the work that Friends of the Earth groups in Africa are doing on climate justice and climate change. On 21 December, a blog post based on that talk was published on ‘Africa is a Country‘. The blog post foregrounds the work that African intellectuals and activists are playing, both in combating dirty energy schemes in their countries and in helping local people to prepare for the effects of climate change. It shows that African NGOs are playing an active part in this and are more than only passive victims of climate change.
On 8 January 2019, Harry Wels of the African Studies Centre in Leiden published a blog post stating that climate change supports the appeal that he and others in his Research Group on ‘Trans-species perspectives on African Studies‘ make for what they call ‘a radical decentring of the human in African studies’. I argue that their reasoning is flawed and that if they want to study animal-human relationships, then the role of the Netherlands would be the most appropriate way to start. The full comment is here.
My posts are published now on Africa on the Blog. On 8 February 2017, a blog post was published called ‘What is the biggest challenge for African education in the 21st Century?‘
In the post, I argue that mother tongue education has been proven to be more efficient than education in other languages. It is also more efficient to become proficient and literate in the mother tongue before starting to learn a second or third language. Unfortunately, in Sub-Saharan Africa only 10% of children are educated in their mother tongue.
The post then discusses the obstacles to implementing mother-tongue education on a larger scale, including neglect of local languages and resistance due to lack of prestige for local languages.
I conclude that in spite of this, the only way forward if education is to become more efficient and accessible for all is to expand local-language education in Africa, not only at the primary, but also at secondary and tertiary levels.
My posts are published now on Africa on the Blog. On 17 October, a blog post was published called ‘How to study Africa as a European, in 2016?‘
In the post, I argue that solidarity was easier in the time before the end of (formal) apartheid. But things are not so clear now. Many well-meaning Europeans have become disillusioned with Africa. Sometimes, this leads to a new patronizing type of attitude, one that puts the blame for Africa’s problems on Africans in general.
To avoid this, I think a choice must be made. My position is that neutrality doesn’t exist. I want to position myself on the side of those who are resisting oppression and are trying to build an Africa based on authenticity, based on the interests of the peoples of Africa and not based on narrow self-interest. For me, there is no alternative then to try to follow the thorny path of solidarity.
Comments are invited!
My political education started when I was in secondary school, a secondary school in the safe but slightly anarchistic Dutch town of Bussum of the seventies.
I was moved by the injustice taking place in the colonies that still existed at the time in Africa, especially in Angola and Mozambique. But I was also moved by the injustice of apartheid and became aware of the unjust minority settler government of then-Rhodesia. Later, my view was broadened, as I became aware of unfair trade relations in the world, as put on the agenda by the Dutch third-world solidarity movement of the time.
During and after my secondary school, I developed in addition a fascination for anything related to the communication between people of different cultural backgrounds. Through a year as a youth exchange student and through contacts afterwards, I gained many useful insights and skills, which I have continued to develop.
In my University years, my focus was on how people can organize themselves in order to gain increased control of their living conditions and of their environment, especially in the Netherlands. However, after my studies, my focus shifted back to Africa. My first job was with one of the larger anti-apartheid organisation that existed in the Netherlands at the time, the Holland Committee on Southern Africa. That period taught me many things, including:
always agreeing with every choice made by that movement. Solidarity in this case means that the liberation movement is seen as the primary actor – the choices of that movement are leading – as a principle, a position of solidarity means that one does not attempt to make choices for on behalf of others.My second and third jobs were for the international environmental movement. A key difference between environment and development groups is that the environmental movement’s primary orientation is towards influencing its own society: environmentalists want to improve the environment they themselves live in. By contrast, development organisations are primarily concerned with changing things elsewhere: change in the organisation’s own society is at best a secondary thing for developmentalists. Internationally, within the environmental movement, there is an attitude of solidarity based on a shared appreciation of how difficult stuggles for change 
can be. This solidarity echoed my earlier experiences in the anti-apartheid movement and made me feel at home. I was then also greatly inspired by meeting some of the leading figures of the environmental movement, such as Wangari Maathai, of Kenya’s Green Belt movement.
My last job led me to do research into internet facilities of Universities and research institutions, primarily in Europe, but also in other parts of the world. There, I became aware of the huge differences that exist between Universities: their organisation, their functions, the facilities they offer. (See for example the description of the University of Nigeria at Nsukka in the nineties in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book Americanah.)
What does this all mean for how I want do be scientifically engaged with Africa in this day and age? Which are my key points of departure, what is my key focus?
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africanations 