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Title Language of education and development in Africa: prospects for decolonisation and empowerment
Full text https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3453562
Date 2022
Author(s) Oloruntoba-Oju, T.; Pinxteren, L.M.C. van; Schmied, J.
Abstract The bulk of thebook is based on papers presented during two virtualconferences hosted by the University of Leiden (Netherlands) in 2021. At theAfrica Knows! Conference, a panel was devoted to 'The language issue andknowledge communication in Africa.' It was initiated by the Universities of Ilorin(Nigeria) and Chemnitz (Germany). The papers by Eleshin, Oloruntoba-Oju,Sanon-Ouattara, Van Pinxteren, and Zatolokina were all first presented at thispanel, before being peer-reviewed for this volume. The central theme of theconference was the decolonization of Africa's knowledge production and related processes. The second conference was the 10th World Congress on African Languages andLinguistics (WOCAL) in June, where a workshop took place under the auspices ofthe Edinburgh Circle on the Promotion of African Languages, entitled 'Let's turnto policy.' The papers by Alfredo, Dissake, and Nguere and Smith were also firstpresented during this workshop before being peer-reviewed for this volume. In general, the position taken by the editorsis that using indigenous languages in education canmake an important contribution to national development as well as to personalempowerment. Africa is characterised in part by its continued use of formercolonial languages in education. However, sixty years afterindependence, it seemshigh time to question this colonial heritage. In the context of global anddigitalcommunication today, old African values of multilingualism and culture-specificcommunicative strategies should not be neglected, but revalued and revived in newways. We do not deny the importance of a good command of internationallanguages. However, this should not be at the expense of indigenous languages. The introduction to the book arguesthat a transition towards increased use ofAfrican languages in formal domains will not only be necessary and practicallypossible, it will become inevitable. - book - Descriptive and Comparative Linguistics
Subject(s) Africa; Education; Language; Cameroon; Angola; Burkina Faso; Nigeria; Republic of Congo; Ethiopia; South Africa
Language fr; en
Publisher Cuvillier Verlag
Type of publication Book editorial; info:eu-repo/semantics/book; Text
Format application/pdf
Source Research in English and Applied Linguistics
Rights https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Identifier isbn:9783736976214; eisbn:9783736966215; lucris-id:441507795
Repository Leiden - University of Leiden
Added to C-A: 2023-06-05;08:46:44