- Of late, there is a renewed impetus to move away from the coloniser’s languages like English, French and Portuguese and push Swahili to its rightful place in the continent.
- The African Union (AU) adopted Swahili as an official working language at its recent heads of state meeting.
Swahili is one of the world’s 10 most widely spoken languages used by more than 200 million speakers. Swahili, which originated in East Africa, stretches from Somalia down to Mozambique and across to the western parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of late there is a renewed impetus to move away from the coloniser’s languages like English, French and Portuguese and push Swahili to its rightful place in the continent.
The African Union (AU) adopted Swahili as an official working language at its recent heads of state meeting. It is already the official language of the East African Community (EAC). In 2019, Swahili became the only African language to be recognised by the Southern African Development Community (SADC).Slowly the language was introduced into the syllabus across South Africa and Botswana.
Experts predict that Swahili’s reach in Africa will continue to expand as a manifestation of African identity. Yet it is not an easy task to displace the European languages which are still dominant throughout the continent. English is the official or second language in 27 out of the 54 countries in Africa, and French is the official language in 21 of them.
