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Language Planning and Ideologies in Postcolonial Africa

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Language Policy and Economics: The Language Question in Africa

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities ((PSMLC))

Abstract

Determining the role of language in the socioeconomic development of the African continent has been ubiquitous in the debate over the language question in postcolonial Africa. This chapter discusses the ideologies that have buttressed policymakers’ thinking about this problem, focusing on the ideology of decolonization (which was expected to emerge through vernacular language education) and the ideology of development grounded in what Blaut refers to as the colonizer’s model of the world (which was expected to emerge through internationalization, the precursor to globalization; The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. Guilford Press, 1993). The main argument in this chapter is that, in postcolonial Africa, attempts to promote the indigenous languages in the higher domains (including the educational system) have failed. Inherited European ideologies, especially the ideology of the nation-state, continue to prevail in the debate over the language question throughout the continent, much as they had in the colonial era.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Asian island state of Singapore is perhaps a rare exception, for, despite its multilingual policy requiring each ethnic group to learn its own language, English remains the chief medium for conducting the business of the state. Consequently, most citizens are bilingual, and trilingualism is common.

  2. 2.

    This last probability may not be entirely true for Latin America; it seems that significant segments of the indigenous population did not wholly endorse the Europeanization of their cultures.

  3. 3.

    On Western aid packages and language, a reviewer reports that, in a startling turnabout, USAID is currently funding a 12-language multilingual education project in Uganda, a 7-language project in Ethiopia, a 4-language (plus French) education project in The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and a Kinyarwanda-focused education project in Rwanda. Similarly, the UK government aid agency, Department for International Development (DfID), has recently funded mother tongue reading materials and programs in Kikamba and Lubukusu, two languages of Kenya (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-international-development). The mother tongue focus of these donors, as the reviewer further notes, appears to be related to the realization that children cannot learn to read with comprehension in a language they do not speak.

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  1. Department of English, Howard University, Washington, District of Columbia, USA

    Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu

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Kamwangamalu, N.M. (2016). Language Planning and Ideologies in Postcolonial Africa. In: Language Policy and Economics: The Language Question in Africa. Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31623-3_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31623-3_3

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