Discover how Swahili is breaking barriers to become the universal language of Africa, promoting unity and bridging linguistic diversity.
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- By Lekan Oguntoyinbo
- NABJ Black News & Views
More than 60 years after the idea was initially broached, Swahili appears poised to become the language for all of Africa.
In the last decade, the African Union, an organization of the continent’s 55 countries, adopted Swahili as an official working language. It has been introduced in classrooms in South Africa and Botswana. In Uganda, the government recently allocated approximately $800 million in its budget for teaching Swahili in its schools. And universities around the continent, most notably in Ghana and Ethiopia, have recently begun teaching the language.
Swahili, which has about 200 million speakers and is one of the world’s 10 most popular languages, is the only African language recognized by the Southern African Development Community, a non-governmental organization based in Botswana. Swahili also is the official language of the East African Community, a coalition of eight countries.
Outside the continent, Swahili is also rising in stature. UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, recently designated July 7 World Swahili Day.
It is an important shift in a world in which English is the most widely spoken language overall. Despite this, Swahili has been the most commonly used language in Africa — even with two dozen African countries listing English as one of their main languages.
Proponents and linguists say adopting an African language as the continent’s lingua franca — or bridge language — would foster stronger business and cultural ties in one of the world’s ethnically and linguistically diverse continents while strengthening a sense of identity and cultural pride.
Language is power and it carries with it knowledge,” Leonard Muaka, an associate professor of linguistics and Swahili at Howard University, told Black News & Views.
“Swahili is a language that reflects and carries many of Africa’s cultures and practices,” Muaka continued. “Therefore, expanding the reach of the language will allow Africans to share the richness of the continent. The indigenous knowledge of Africans is lost through Western languages, but because of the closeness and similarities of the people of Africa, this African knowledge will be preserved both on the continent and the diaspora.”
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