Abstract
Bilingual education, the use of two or more languages of instruction at some point in a student’s school career, is practised variably in many African countries. In reviewing the issues, therefore, it is only possible to examine some general characteristics and trends. What I propose to do in this review is (a) to give an exposition of some historical background factors that have influenced bilingual education in Africa, (b) to comment on the policies and practices adopted in selected bilingual programmes, where ex-colonial languages are used as the dominant media of instruction, (c) to draw a comparison with those programmes that adopt indigenous languages as dominant languages of education, and, finally, (d) to give some suggestions for future research and practices. My focus, unless otherwise specified, is on sub-Saharan Africa (see the review by Egbo in Volume 2).
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Obondo, M.A. (1997). Bilingual Education in Africa: An Overview. In: Cummins, J., Corson, D. (eds) Bilingual Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4531-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4531-2_3
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