Is there a co-relation between Language and Development in Africa?
When: Jul 25th, 2005 6:08:23 am - Subscribe
I'm feeling: concerned
Africa - the land of plenty of everything, except development. Since I love our continent so much, I spend time wondering about this development thing. Questions like why we are lagging behind, what is our future, stuff like that. :-) I have recently been pondering over the role of indigenous African languages and their role in Africa's development. As it happens, if you set out to find a justification for your theory, you will find one. This is an area where you cannot quantify variables, so I got to my conclusion by analyzing what I have experienced as a citizen.
Africa has around 3000 ethnic communities, which are loosely grouped into language families. E.g. Bantu, Niger-Congo. Most related languages may have had a root language from which they originated. The differences in "tune", pronunciation, and finer details may be a product of migration and interaction with surrounding communities.
One day it struck me that countries that are developed, (or on the way to development) use their own languages, e.g. the British use English, the Germans use German, the South Koreans use Korean, and the list goes on. By language, I mean what is taught in school and used in official communication.
Contrast this to Africa, where foreign languages have taken precedence over our own languages. Most African countries use English, French, and Portuguese as their official lingua franca. Many people cannot even write in their own languages.
Do you see the relationship? Developed countries - speak their own languages, while underdeveloped (Africa) - speak foreign languages.
The foreign languages are not the cause underdevelopment in African countries. Rather, it is the mentality that the prominence of the languages fosters. When a foreign language has such national stature above an indigenous language, it says that the indigenous language is "inferior" and ineffective, while the foreign language is obviously "superior".
Maybe this "inferiority complex" is what has some shoddy Africans faking any accent, British, American, Aussie e.t.c. This pathetic behavior has declined in Kenya (thankfully!) and a person who dares to fake an accent will be "shut down", so to speak.
Language also encompasses the values and beliefs e.t.c. of a society. If an indigenous language is inferior to a foreign one, then the values and beliefs that it carries are also inferior (by extension).
If our values are also inferior (because of an inferior language), it also explains why many Africans may view traditional ways as retrogressive, and quickly adopt the behavior associated with the people whose language they speak. Whatever is hip in the "superior language" country, be it clothes, food, hairstyles, slang, will be borrowed at the speed of light. Francophone Africa follows French football, enjoys French music, while Anglophone Africa follows English football, and enjoys American and British music. This is all at the expense of local football and music.
Foreign languages were chosen as official languages because they were seen as "more effective" in uniting the citizens of a country. I think it is even more insulting when these languages become national languages. Thank GOD that in Kenya, the National language is Kiswahili, and the official languages are English and Kiswahili.
In Kenya, there are around 46 languages, and realistically we cannot use all of them as official (thank God for Kiswahili). In other African countries, there may be 100+ indigenous languages, and they do not have Kiswahili to use like we do, so the only "option" is English, French, or Portuguese. DRAT!!
If Kwame Nkrumah were still alive, he would probably identify this phenomenon as part of the Neo-Colonialism he talked about. I swear, if I were President of the Homeland of Kenya............................................. my priority at the end of my term would be the decolonization of the citizen's minds. I'd beat it out, exorcise it, pull it out, whatever it takes to bring Kenyans to a realization that they can and should be equals on the world stage. Then we would never have to live through another LIVE8 concert. (See earlier blog posts.)
We would learn in Kiswahili until university, and foreigners coming to our universities would take a Test of Kiswahili as a Foreign Language. (Isn't it infuriating that students going to Australia, UK, or United States of America from Anglophone Africa still have to do a Test Of English as a Foreign Language test, and yet we learn in English? Hasn't English been around long enough to be "indigenous"?)
I think I will make this theory my PHD project, if I ever want to do one.
"We face neither east nor west, we face forward". Kwame Nkrumah
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