Languages In Africa

The premise of this book is that Africa’s numerous languages make education cumbersome. In this well-researched study, the authors discuss how the many tongues of the continent create a need for a common language, yet there’s apprehension over whether to use it. The Muslims above the equator want Arabic, but that takes longer to learn to speak and write. English seems like the best choice for language, as it’s already used in much of Africa, yet Senegal, Niger, Ivory Coast, Benin, and other still use French. As for Francophone Africa, the people haven’t benefited much from French or Belgium in the last 30 years. Which one will they use?

A statistical study was done on children in Cameroon, and some small African nations, along with Belize and the Philippines. The results were that the highest math scores occurred when the teacher was highly proficient either in English or French. When his/her mastery of that language was weak, the students’ scores were weak. Cameroon had high scores, because the teachers in that country are expected to be proficient. Ghana, which has had government funded education for the last 20 years, has seen success in teaching the students bilingually. Each school teaches the students in their local language, with English taught separately. The students are broken up into small classes for English, then grouped together for everything else. This allows them to get more attention in English class, while the math instruction is easier because the teacher and students have no trouble communicating. Think of it in terms of any language; if you were teaching English speaking kids to learn French, you would make French a separate class. You would not expect them to learn math, science, and history in the foreign language.

Further chapters discuss the subject of advertisements in Kenya, which are different depending on the region. It means that different posters have to be processed for each language area, which can make things costly, but at the same time the advertisements don’t work if people can’t understand them. The Latin alphabet is always used, because aside from Latin and Arabic script, Africa has no writing system. In a funny twist, a Paypoint advertisement appeared in two languages, but the product name had to come at the end of one ad and at the beginning of the other. As with the French-English difference, adjectives will come in the beginning in one language, or at the end in the other.

There are, however, some pieces missing from this book. It doesn’t have any case studies of Africans who move to NY, London, Paris, or Israel. I’m keen to know what they do about the language, and whether they benefit from knowing English or French once they arrive. The 2009 book Dead Aid by Dambissa Moyo (an economist from Zambia) was all about how “helping” Africa doesn’t work, and I would love to know her opinion on the continent’s language issue. There are many other great African writers who’ve spent time in Europe and the Americas, and I bet they’d have a unique perspective on this topic.