Abstract
Africa is reputed to be the most complex multilingual part of the world. With over 2,086 indigenous languages, the degree of multilingualism of individual countries ranges from five languages in Lesotho and Swaziland to over 450 in Nigeria (Chumbow, B. S., Mother tongue-based multilingual education: Empirical foundations, implementation strategies and recommendations for new nations. In Mcllwraith (Ed.), Multilingual education in Africa: Lessons from the Juba language-in-education conference (pp. 37–55). London: British Council, 2013; Ouane, A., Towards a multilingual culture of education. Hamburg: UNESCO Institute for Education, 2003). Some of these languages are spoken by small populations whereas 16 are spoken by large populations across national borders. Consequently, most adult Africans are multilingual in their mother tongue, another indigenous African language and/or a widely spoken language. In addition, people who have gone through school will also speak the official language which is often the language of the former colonizing European power and which is learnt largely only in school contexts. Given this complex linguistic environment, the role that the different languages should play in the national life of the different countries generally, and in education in particular, has attracted policy determination since the advent of Western-type education in Africa.
In this chapter, we examine the shifts in language-in-education policies with particular reference to inclusion of African languages in education as we analyze the factors that have contributed to the evolution of the policies and practices. Secondly, we analyze recent and current developments with regard to the inclusion of African languages in national policies, language and materials development, and national language planning to facilitate the teaching of these languages and their use as languages of instruction. Thirdly, we discuss the problems and difficulties that bilingual education policies encounter especially with regard to pedagogical challenges, and conclude the chapter with proposals for successful development and implementation of bilingual policies.
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Bunyi, G., Schroeder, L. (2017). Bilingual Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policies and Practice. In: García, O., Lin, A., May, S. (eds) Bilingual and Multilingual Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02258-1_13
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