In Africa, the need for the decolonization of education, hence vernacular edu-cation, arose against the failure of inherited colonial language policies to reach the goals for which they were retained, whether in terms of national unity, national economic development or literacy; and against high rates of school failure resulting from the use of ex-colonial languages as the sole medium of instruction in African schools. The need for vernacular education was articu-lated by the now defunct Organization of African Unity (OAU) in what the organization called the ‘Language Plan of Action for Africa’, whose goals were, inter alia, as follows:
a. to liberate the African peoples from undue reliance on utilization of non-indigenous languages as dominant, official languages of the state in favour of the gradual takeover of appropriate and carefully selected indigenous languages in this domain.
b. to ensure that African languages by appropriate legal provision and practical promo-tions assume their rightful role as the means of official communication in public affairs of each Member State in replacement of European languages which have hitherto played this role. (OAU 1986)
Similar and most recent recommendations concerning the state of language policy and planning in Africa are made in the [January 2000] Asmara (Erithrea) Declaration on African Languages and Literatures, which reads as follows:
All African children have the unalienable right to attend school and learn their mother tongues at all levels of education;
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The effective and rapid development of science and technology in Africa depends on the use of African languages;
African languages are vital for the development of democracy based on equality and social justice;
African languages are essential for the decolonization of African minds and for the African Renaissance. (Asmara Declaration, 2000) [http//www.queensu.ca/snid/
asmara.htm]
Along these lines, Bamgbose (2006) points to what he refers to as ‘laudable initiatives’ in efforts to promote the status of the indigenous African languages in higher domains. Some such initiatives include terminology development, which has resulted in the publication of the Multilingual Mathematics Dic-tionary (for Grades 1–6) in all 11 official languages compiled by the National Language Service of the Department of Arts and Culture in South Africa; the ongoing translation of Nigeria’s Constitution into the country’s three major languages (Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa) under the auspices of the Ministry of Infor-mation in Nigeria; the translation of the 2006 Nigerian Census Questionnaire into 13 Nigerian languages by the National Population Commission; the estab-lishment of the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN), which was approved in January 2006 as a specialized scientific institution of the African Union (AU), the successor to the Organization of African Unity (OAU); and the declaration by AU of 2006 as ‘the Year of African Languages’. Let me digress briefly on each of these seeming ‘achievements’.
The publication of the multilingual dictionary is indeed a step in the right direction, but more still needs to be done for African languages in South Africa ‘to arrive’ (Kamwangamalu 1997: 140). Likewise, the translation of the Nigerian Constitution and the Census from English into the country’s major languages must be welcomed, but it does not in any way qualify as a laudable achievement. Such an activity, taking place as it does almost a half century since Nigeria obtained independence from Britain in the early 1960, is at best described as lip service intended perhaps to appease language activists. Also, it seems that Bamgbose (2006) mistakes language-related political events for progress in language planning. More specifically, the establishment (by the African Union) of the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) and the dec-laration of 2006 as ‘the year of African languages’ are, in my view, political events rather than ‘a significant development in empowerment of African languages’. When all is said and done, these policy declarations, neither the first nor the last of their kind, will ultimately be thrown into the garbage bin of policy declarations about African languages. There have been many such
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declarations about African languages (including the now 20-year old Language Plan of Action for Africa) in the past but all of them have come and gone, leaving no trace to remember them by.
Akin to their predecessors in the 1990s, the policy initiatives and declara-tions highlighted above are not matched with practical steps to use indigenous languages in education or to make them economically or politically useful to their users. In other words, no matter how laudable such initiatives are claimed to be, they do not ensure upward social mobility for the majority of Africa’s population. The indigenous African languages remain confined to the cultural domains, much as they were in the colonial era. Against the background of the globalization and spread of English, it is becoming increasingly difficult for African languages to find space in domains such as education. This is even harder in former French and Portuguese colonies since here indigenous lan-guages struggle to survive not only against French and Portuguese but also English, a language that some former French or Portuguese colonies have adopted (e.g. Rwanda) or contemplate adopting (e.g. Mozambique) as the sec-ond official language in addition to French or Portuguese, respectively. Market forces ensure that English, the golden language (Walsh 2006: 32), becomes what Bamgbose (2003) has termed ‘a recurring decimal’, for the language seems to turn up everywhere as a result of its global instrumental value. Thus, as Fishman (2004: 421) notes with respect to immigrant languages in the USA, African languages remain exposed to the Darwinian law of the linguistic jun-gle, according to which the strong survive and, in competition, if any, with the strong, the weak die off. I concur with Amy Tsui when she remarks, about the medium-of-instruction policies in Hong Kong, that
[such] policies are shaped by an interaction between political, social and economic forces. However, among these agendas, it is always the political agenda that takes priority. Other agendas, be they social, economic, or educational, come to the fore only if they converge with the political agenda. Yet it is always these [other] agen-das that will be used as public justification for policy making. (2005: 113)
A number of questions arise as a result: How can the agenda for universal lit-eracy in indigenous languages in Africa be implemented if such an agenda is always overshadowed by the political agenda? Also, would universal literacy in indigenous languages, if it is ever achieved, facilitate upward social mobility for the language users? If not, what should be done to remedy this situation?
The last section of this chapter addresses these and related questions against the background of recent developments in the field of language economics, to
which I turn below. It also points to the consequences of language policy fail-ure for the indigenous African languages, with a focus on language shift from these languages to Western languages such as English and French especially in Africa’s urban communities.