GHANA-EDUCATION: Mainstreaming African Languages in Education

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Edward Ameyibor

ACCRA, Oct 26 1996 (IPS) - For decades, millions of children in Sub- Saharan Africa have had to learn from algebra to physics in tongues that are not their own, but now some education officials aim to mainstream African tongues in African schools.

African education ministers meeting here at a forum in early October called for the wholesale adoption of a draft charter to promote the use of indigenous languages as a medium of instruction in Sub-Saharan Africa.

They said this would enhance learning in and out of school and help ensure greater success in individual countries’ efforts to developing their human resources.

During colonisation, the language of the colonial power, whether French or Spanish, whether Portuguese or English, was used in education as in other public institutions and its hegemony was virtually unchallenged.

In fact, in some territories, prominent scholars were proud advocates of the language of the metropolitan authority, including Senegal’s first president, Leopold Sedar Senghor, who lives in retirement in France and is the only African recognised by the French as an authority on their language.

When independence came, various African countries opted to continue using the language of their colonisers in education. Only one Sub-Saharan African nation – Tanzania – adopted an indigenous tongue, Kiswahili, as its official language.

In Ghana, for example, despite a history of strong nationalism and advocacy of the African personality, there have been many people who pride themselves on being defenders of the ‘Queen’s Language’ (English).

Now all that is changing. Throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, the question of language as a medium of instruction is increasingly coming under discussion.

“We need to involve all agencies to accept the challenges for the development of a dynamic partnership capable of strongly promoting the use of indigenous languages in education,” the ministers said in the draft charter.

They suggested that each country seize the opportunities offered by the declaration of 1996 as Africa Education Year and take steps to realise the goal of using local languages in schools.

A decade of Education in Africa, (1997-2006), has also been declared by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

The ministers have tasked Ghana’s Education Minister, Mr. Harry Sawyerr, with sending the charter to the OAU for study and adoption by all African countries.

Sawyerr said that since the Accra conference had identified leading African languages, groups should be formed in each country to help develop national policies on languages.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which is helping Africa develop language policies, should transfer funds it has earmarked for conferences on the issue to support activities linked to the implementation of the charter, Sawyerr said.

The position of Sub-Saharan African languages varies from country to country, and also within countries. While the dominance of French is strong in Central African countries such as Gabon and Congo, Kiswahili is written and studied in East African nations.

“In Nigeria, there are many scholars writing novels and translating science books into indigenous languages like Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa,” Raymond Ankomah, a Ghanaian linguist who worked in Nigeria during the 1980s, told IPS.

He recalled that Nobel Laurate Wole Soyinka has written plays and novels in Yoruba, his mother tongue.

In Ghana, textbooks in local languages have been written since the 1950s or even earlier, but the status of indigenous tongues has remained poor. “In second-cycle (secondary) schools in Ghana, teachers in local languages are usually considered inferior to, say, English masters,” said Joana Wood, a teacher.

Ghana has a centre for local languages training and development in the central town of Ajumako, where teachers specialise in seven Ghanaian languages before going out and teaching them in primary and secondary schools, where students must offer an indigenous language as a core subject.

But some people prefer English to be promoted more actively.

“English is our official language and it is the subject in which most of our children are failing these days at their senior secondary school examinations,” says Victor Smith, a communicator. “We must rather promote that in favour of this romantic idea of indigenous languages becoming mediums of instruction. Where will that take us?”

But Kwame Karikari of the School of Communication Studies, University of Ghana, supports the drive to promote indigenous languages. He argues that “all countries that have advanced in this world teach their children in their own languages.”

One of the arguments often used against the promotion of indigenous languages is that they have no words to express scientific, technological and other concepts. But, counters Oko Dagadu, a broadcaster on ‘Ghana Radio’, “where our local languages are limited, we create new words like we have done for ‘billions’. We can do the same for scientific terms and words.”

“The English language has benefited tremendously from that,” he adds. “There is even a Ga word ‘kwashiorkor’ in their medical books.”

(Ga is the language of the people of Accra.)

Educationalist Solomon Boadu is also in favour of mainstreaming African languages in schools. “The project sounds romantic at present but with the necessary political support, the first steps towards indigenising African education could begin and that will help our children a lot,” he said.