People in many African communities live within a series of concentric circles when it comes to language. In a small group, a speaker uses an often unwritten and endangered mother tongue that is rarely used in school. A national indigenous language—written, widespread, sometimes used in school—surrounds it. An international language like French or English, a vestige of colonialism, carries prestige, is used in higher education, and promises mobility—and yet it will not be well known by its users. The essays in Languages in Africa explore the layers of African multilingualism as they affect language policy and education. Through case studies ranging across the continent, the contributors consider multilingualism in the classroom as well as in domains ranging from music and film to politics and figurative language. The contributors report on the widespread devaluing and even death of indigenous languages. They also investigate how poor teacher training leads to language-related failures in education. At the same time, they demonstrate that education in a mother tongue can work, linguists can use their expertise to provoke changes in language policies, and linguistic creativity thrives in these multilingual communities.

Although multilingualism is the norm in the day-to-day lives of most sub-Saharan Africans, multilingualism in settings outside of cities has so far been under-explored. This gap is striking when considering that in many parts of Africa, individual multilingualism was widespread long before the colonial period and centuries before the continent experienced large-scale urbanization. The edited collection African Multilingualisms fills this gap by presenting results from recent and ongoing research based on fieldwork in rural African environments as well as environments characterized by contact between urban and rural communities of speakers. The contributors—mostly Africans themselves, including a number of emerging scholars—present findings that both complement and critique current scholarship on African multilingualism. In addition, new methods and tools are introduced for the study of multilingualism in rural settings, alongside illustrations of the kinds of results that they yield. African Multilingualisms reveals an impressive diversity in the features of local language ideologies, multilingual behaviors, and the relationship between language and identity.

This book is an analysis of modernisation informed by the place of language in education, health, the economy and governance in the African context. It paints a wide canvas of Africa in its different facets, and shows how language is used as an instrument to deny access to socioeconomic and political emancipation.

This book interrogates and problematises African multilingualism as it is currently understood in language education and research. It challenges the enduring colonial matrices of power hidden within mainstream conceptions of multilingualism that have been propagated in the Global North and then exported to the Global South under the aegis of colonial modernity and pretensions of universal epistemic relevance. The book contributes new points of method, theory and interpretation that will advance scholarly conversations on decolonial epistemology by introducing the notion of coloniality of language – a summary term that describes the ways in which notions of language and multilingualism in post-colonial societies remain colonial. The authors begin the process of mapping out what a socially realistic notion of multilingualism would look like if we took into account the voices of marginalised and ignored African communities of practice – both on the African continent and in the diasporas.

This book is a must-read for every language teaching professional and researcher working in a multilingual context. Multilingualism and Education in Africa: The State of the State of the Art is an up-to-date exploration and wide-ranging review of the symbiotic relationship between multilingualism and education in Africa. The African continent is rich in languages. Most of her inhabitants are multilingual and many of the nations have embraced multilingual education. This book examines multilingualism in education from three broad perspectives: multilingualism and language in education policy in Africa; multilingualism as an educational resource in Africa; and attitudes and challenges of multilingualism and education in Africa. The book’s nineteen chapters discuss these three perspectives from East, West, Central and South Africa. All the contributors are leading authorities in multilingualism and education. The chapters combine a wide range of viewpoints based on theoretical, empirical and personal experiences. The reader is left with a deeper understanding of the unique features of multilingualism and education in Africa that have seldom been addressed by those who experience them first-hand. The book demonstrates successful practices in multilingualism and education; showing how African nations have determined what works for them without ignoring challenges such as policies on paper, attitudes towards African languages and limited resources. The benefits of multilingual education override the challenges. The book’s extensive coverage makes it an important resource for scholars and policy makers in the field of multilingualism and education. Overall, this book represents an important contribution to an important subject in education globally. The editors have provided an introductory overview to the book and commentaries on the three sections.

This book challenges the view that digital communication in Africa is limited and relatively unsophisticated and questions the assumption that digital communication has a damaging effect on indigenous African languages. The book applies the principles of Digital African Multilingualism (DAM) in which there are no rigid boundaries between languages. The book charts a way forward for African languages where greater attention is paid to what speakers do with the languages rather than what the languages look like, and offers several models for language policy and planning based on horizontal and user-based multilingualism. The chapters demonstrate how digital communication is being used to form and sustain communication in many kinds of online groups, including for political activism and creating poetry, and offer a paradigm of language merging online that provides a practical blueprint for the decolonization of African languages through digital platforms.