This shows that multilingusim does not pose for Africans the problems of communication that Europeans imagine and that the mismatch between policy statements and their pragmatic outcomes is a far more serious problem for future development

This volume explores the central role of language across all aspects of public and private life in Africa.

How do governments in Africa make decisions about language? What does language have to do with state-building, and what impact might it have on democracy? This manuscript provides a longue durée explanation for policies toward language in Africa, taking the reader through colonial, independence, and contemporary periods. It explains the growing trend toward the use of multiple languages in education as a result of new opportunities and incentives. The opportunities incorporate ideational relationships with former colonizers as well as the work of language NGOs on the ground. The incentives relate to the current requirements of democratic institutions, and the strategies leaders devise to win elections within these constraints. By contrasting the environment faced by African leaders with that faced by European state-builders, it explains the weakness of education and limited spread of standard languages on the continent. The work combines constructivist understanding about changing preferences with realist insights about the strategies leaders employ to maintain power.

Languages of Instruction: Policy implications for education in Africa

Language in South Africa (LiSA) debates the role of language and language planning in the reconstruction, development and transformation of post-apartheid democratic South Africa. The 1996 constitution of South Africa is founded on the political philosophy of pluralism and is directed at promoting democratic values, equity and non-discrimination, human rights, national unity and the development of all the country’s communities. The question asked in LiSA is how language planning can contribute towards the attainment of these national ideals. Set against the language political realities of the country — the a-symmetric power relations between the languages; the striking differences in the structural; functional and symbolic adaptation of the official languages; and the many language-related problems in the country — it debates the role of language in state administration, national integration, educational development and economic development. The volume concludes with a discussion of language development and language management.

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Potsdam (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Contrasting Languages in the USA, language: English, abstract: African languages and language varieties are amongst the fastest growing languages in the U.S. from 2016 on. This paper aims to show why and how this sudden development is happening, and what changes and chances it bears for the development of U.S. American communities and society as a whole. To do so, the paper will first look at the languages that are most commonly spoken in the USA, followed by a brief introduction into African languages and language varieties before taking a closer look at how recent migration impacts the language demographics of the United States and the country’s culture.

This book addresses the perennial question of how to promote Africa’s indigenous languages as medium of instruction in educational systems. Breaking with the traditional approach to the continent’s language question by focusing on the often overlooked issue of the link between African languages and economic development, Language Policy and Economics argues that African languages are an integral part of a nation’s socio-political and economic development. Therefore, the book argues that any language policy designed to promote these languages in such higher domains as the educational system in particular must have economic advantages if the intent is to succeed, and proposes Prestige Planning as the way to address this issue. The proposition is a welcome break away from language policies which pay lip-service to the empowerment of African languages while, by default, strengthening the stranglehold of imported European languages.