year 2010 marked a milestone for the majority of African nations, as most of them celebrated the 50th anniversary of political independence and liberation from former Western colonial powers. However, as Fishman (1996, p. 5) remarks, “although the lowering of one flag and the raising of another may indicate the end of colonial status, these acts do not necessarily indicate the end of imperialist privilege in neo‐colonial disguise.” In Africa, imperialist privilege is on display especially through former colonial languages such as English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, for they remain the chief if not exclusive medium through which African nations conduct official business in virtually all the institutions of the state, including the government and administration, the educational system, and the media. In this regard, Popham (1996) notes forcefully that while the engine of colonialism long ago ran out of steam the momentum of its languages remains formidable, and it is against their tyranny that smaller languages fight to survive. Colonialism, says London (2003), is a state of mind in colonizer and colonized alike. It does not end when the colonists go home. Instead, it remains an unfinished business and a footprint, impacting as it does all aspects of a postcolonial polity's life, including language policy.
This entry reviews the language policy statements that the African continent has made, through its institutions such as the African Union, to change the status quo and carve a place for indigenous African languages, especially in the educational system. This is done against the background of the ideologies that have informed language policies in Africa from the colonial era to the present, especially the ideology of development on the one hand, and the ideology of decolonization on the other. It argues that Africa's language policy statements remain symbolic at best, and that their only merit lies in the fact that they have helped to keep the debate on language policy in Africa alive. It argues further that language policy makers need to do more than merely make policy statements if Africa's indigenous languages are to break through and become free from the shackles of neocolonialism and former colonial languages. The entry concludes with suggestions as to how the breakthrough can be achieved, drawing on previous work on the role of African languages vis‐à‐vis former colonial languages in the educational system (Kamwangamalu, 1997, 2004, 2016).
Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Language Policy and Ideologies
The literature indicates that no Western country utilizes a language for education and other national purposes which is of external origin and the mother tongue of none, or at most few, of its people (Spencer, 1985, p. 390). The Germans, the British, the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the French are all schooled through the medium of their respective national languages: German, English, Portuguese, Spanish, French. Likewise, other European countries, such as Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Austria, to list but these, use their respective languages—Polish, Czech, Dutch, German—in all formal domains, including education. In Africa, however, children receive an education through the medium of an excolonial language such as French, English, Spanish, or Portuguese. Although these languages have been used in Africa for almost 400 years, efforts to promote literacy in and make them accessible to the African masses have failed. As Laitin and Ramachandran (2016) and Djité (2008) point out, more than 80–90% of the population in most African countries do not speak excolonial languages—French, English, Portuguese, Spanish—and this is especially true for the older generations. Along these lines, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2014) states that Africa has the highest illiteracy rates in the world, estimated in 2011 to be 41% and 30% for adults and youth, respectively. The organization notes that, of the 11 countries with the lowest recorded literacy in the world, 10 are in Africa. According to UNESCO (1995, 2003), in 1990 there were 138 million illiterate persons in sub‐Saharan Africa. In a more recent report, the UNESCO Institute of Statistics notes that more than 1 in 3 adults in the African continent cannot read, 182 million adults are unable to read and write, and 48 million youths (ages 15–24) are illiterate (UNESCO, 2013).
Put differently, the social distribution of excolonial languages in Africa remains very limited and restricted to a minority elite group; the majority of Africa's population remains on the fringe, language‐based division has increased, and economic development has not reached the majority (Alexander, 1997, p. 88). Against this background, Prah (1995, p. 67) notes pointedly that most African states constitutionally create space for African languages but hardly attempt to alter what was handed down through the colonial experience. And since excolonial languages are not equally accessible to all, they do not equalize opportunities but rather reproduce inequality. African countries have, for the past 50 years, been grappling with the question of how to remedy this state of affairs and promote the indigenous African languages as the medium of instruction in the educational system. The debate around the medium of instruction is being rekindled by the widening gaps between the elite, who overtly profess the promotion of indigenous languages as medium of instruction while at the same time sending their own offspring to schools where the medium of instruction is a former colonial language, and the masses, who are marginalized because they have no access to excolonial languages. Also, this debate is informed by two competing language ideologies: the ideology of development and the ideology of decolonization.
The ideology of decolonization of education requires that excolonial languages be replaced with the indigenous African languages as media of instruction, whereas the ideology of development requires continual use of excolonial languages in the educational system and other higher institutions of the state. The ideology of development appears to be based on a wanting dichotomy: Socioeconomic development is possible only through the medium of European languages versus indigenous African languages are good only for preserving African cultures and traditions. Scholars who subscribe to the use of an indigenous African language as the medium of instruction maintain that colonial schools deprived African children of their cultural heritage (Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1983; Alexander, 1997). Also, they point to the cognitive advantages associated with the mother tongue of the learners, as highlighted in UNESCO's (1995) report on the merit of vernacular education. Those who subscribe to the ideology of development view instruction in the language of the former colonial power as an approach that will lead to greater proficiency in that language, representing a further step toward economic development and participation in the international global economy (Mfum‐Mensah, 2005). It is argued that indigenous languages do not have the linguistic complexity to enable them to be used in technical and scientific contexts (Balfour, 1999, p. 107). Linguistic scholarship has, however, shown conclusively that the notion that some languages inhibit intellectual or economic development is a myth. As McArthur (1983, p. 21) explains, “all languages are equally capable of expressing whatever their users need them to express, and have equal potential, although historical events may significantly benefit or impede a particular language.”
In retaining former colonial languages as official languages, language policy makers expected that the adopted European language would develop into a viable medium of national communication, that it would be adopted by the African population, that it would spread as a lingua franca, and perhaps eventually also as a first language by replacing the local languages, as was the case in large parts of Latin America (Weinstein, 1990). However, as the next section explains, those expectations have not as yet been met.
The African Union and Africa's Past Language Policies
The African Union (AU) is an intergovernmental organization consisting of 53 African states. It was established on July 9, 2002 and became the successor of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The AU's objectives are to accelerate the political and socioeconomic integration of the continent; to promote and defend African common positions on issues of interest to the continent and its peoples; to achieve peace and security in Africa; and to promote democratic institutions, good governance, and human rights. With respect to language, the constitution of the AU stipulates that the organization recognizes six official languages: Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swahili. In practice, however, the AU uses mostly English and French for the conduct of its business.
This section discusses the AU's efforts to promote the use of the indigenous African languages in the higher domains, with a focus on the educational system.
