Analysis-Reflections On Mother Tongue In Africa

By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou

October 16, 2017

Languages in Africa

The long spell of colonial rule in Africa, might have,temporarily, solved the problem of communication betweenAfrican countries themselves, on the one hand, and thesecountries and the rest of the world, on the other. However, thiscreated a complex linguistic situation on the ground thatAfrican governments have, since, been unable to solve. And asa result, national educational systems are constantly on the limpand need urgently to be revamped, but the burning question is:how?

Africa is home to thousands of languages and idioms. Thesenumerous languages can, tentatively, be classified in thefollowing manner:

1. Tribal language: an autochthonous idiom spoken by themembers of a given tribe only. Unfortunately suchlanguages are in imminent danger of extinction.

2. Community language: a native language used by severaltribes in a given geographical area.

3. National language: a native language or languages usedwithin a given country for communication and culturalpurposes.

4. Trans-national language: a native language or languagesused in more than one country, such as Pular, Swahili,Wolof, etc.

5. Official language: a foreign language or languagesimposed by colonial powers as a lingua-franca for use inadministration, business circles, trade and schools: such asFrench, English, Portuguese, etc.

Linguistic areas in Africa

It is a known fact that the issue of mother tongue i in educationin Africa is saddled with pitfalls and drawbacks, even if manyAfrican countries have, seemingly, devised waterproof

strategies to promote the use of such native languages in schoolcurriculum. And as if the actual situation of mother tongues isnot complex and intricate enough, globalization is adding moresalt to injury by insidiously pressuring people, through themagic of ICT, to drop altogether their “useless” nativelanguages as well as some colonial languages for the Englishlanguage.

The present paper will attempt to shed light on and discuss thesituation of mother tongues in the African educational systemsfrom such angles as:

Establishment of true national curricula; Textbooks; Teacher training; Language policy; Literacy, etc.

This article will aim at painting the true picture of the situationboth in some North African and Sub-Saharan countries thatwere colonized by France the last century, given, somewhat,that the colonial educational legacy is similar.

Omnipotence Of Colonial Legacy

The worst thing about French colonialism is not so much itspronounced paternalism in Africa but its linguistic carbon printon African national identities which acted as an umbilical corddifficult to sever and led to an era of disguised linguistic andcultural imperialism legitimated by the so-called worldfrancophone movement.

Initially, this movement was purely cultural with the primaryobjective to perpetuate French presence in Africa, but in theearly 80s, as English language, emboldened by the digitalrevolution moved ahead to become the universal language, the

French attempted to check its ineluctable advance by calling theworld to adopt cultural specificity “specificité culturelle” andmulticulturalism. But this cultural specificity was only good forthe defense of French culture from English hegemony, not theother way around for other small countries, because Frenchofficials continued to defend bitterly their linguisticimperialism especially through their own autochthonouspressure groups present in key political spheres and in trade andbusiness.

Indeed, when the French first set foot in Africa in early 19thcentury (Algeria 1830), they engaged into a massive culturalcolonization making French the official language of education,administration and business, and discouraged theautochthonous people from using their national languages andscripts.

This dislike of local idioms springs from the fact that Islamicreligious lodges in North, Central and West Africa resisted thisforeign occupation and rallied large swaths of population underthe banner of Holy War jihad against the Christian occupiers.So, it took the French quite a while to “pacify” their colonies,alienating in the process large sections of the population thatbecame many decades later political and armed decolonizationmovements.

In Algeria, though the religious leader Emir Abdelkader failedto oust the French, yet his bravery and memory lasted longenough o ignite the national movement of FLN that led thiscountry in 1963 to independence from French colonialism.

Algeria, after independence, disheartened by the atrocities ofFrench occupation and then cultural colonialism made Arabicthe official language of the nation and, somewhat attempted, tono avail, to make English the first foreign language in school.

This politically-motivated move had dire consequences on thecountry. On the one hand by adopting Arabic, Tamazight-speaking Algerians were discriminated against and their culturedisregarded. On the other, the arabization of the educationalsystem created militant and vociferous Islamic elite FrontIslamique du Salut -FIS- that vowed to re-Islamize the society.This political movement, first acclaimed by the have-nots of themilitary regime made the FIS win the parliamentary electionsof 1988. Threatened, by this energetic and flamboyant politicalmovement, the army-controlled government annulled theresults of the elections. This led to a bloody civil war thatclaimed the lives of 900,000 people over a decade of turmoil.

In Morocco and Tunisia, independence did not mean the end ofFrench linguistic imperialism, but on the contrary Frenchlanguage flourished even more in all spheres of life in spite ofthe Arabization process started in the 70s in the educationalsystem but never reached administration and business.

A somewhat similar situation is witnessed in Western andCentral African nations. The French left decades ago but theirlanguage and cultural influence remained vivid. In Senegal, aFrench-educated intellectual, Leopold Seda Senghor, anationalist with a mild stance on colonialism encouraged areturn-to-the-source movement glorifying African identities.This cultural movement that called itself negritude was in noway a negation of the French linguistic supremacy, becauseright after independence most Western and Central Africannations adopted French as the official language in education,politics and business. This is the state of affairs in Senegal,Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Central Africa, Gabon,Congo, etc.

The change in attitude towards mother tongues came, notthrough the concerned countries but through an African

intellectual, Ahmadou Tahar M’bow, who was electedSecretary General of UNESCO, and immediately launched aseries of field programs aimed at the rehabilitation of Africanlanguages in the following areas:

1. African languages and idioms as vehicles of dailycommunication between intra-national and trans-nationalcommunities, often separated by colonial artificialborders;

2. Full rehabilitation of national languages and thesubsequent recognition of oral literature and music; and

3. Use of national languages in educational curriculum andliteracy programmes

These “revolutionary measures” had as an immediate outcome:

1. Recomposition of the national identity around the locallanguages;

2. Recognition of the African identity; and3. Review of the national curriculum

As a matter of fact, since, the French language, though it keptits quality of official language, lost its cultural and educationalsupremacy in favor of African languages that were in the pastbelittled by the French colonial power. In fact, during thecolonial period the French encouraged the locals to write in thelanguage of Molière because it was the language of fineliterature and even set aside money to publish their work andmake it known worldwide.

Actual Status Of Mother Tongues

Language families in Africa

The rehabilitation of national languages in Africa started inearly 1980 at the university level by serious research undertakenby linguists on different idioms spoken in a given country orarea. Students motivated by the writings of their professorsjoined in the fray and went into the field investigating locallanguages in their different aspects: phonetics, phonology,syntax, semantics and language use.

However, the need for the recognition of national languages asfull vehicles of communications and means of durabledevelopment made itself felt around 1982 when many countrieslaunched massive programmes of literacy in the countrysidewith the aim to help population to become financiallyindependent and take care of their own lives rather than wait forgovernments, that, all in all, lack financial means, to come totheir rescue.

As such, local associations for durable development werefounded in black African countries with the help ofinternational organizations such as UNESCO, UNICEF,UNDP, etc. These associations with little means and muchdetermination launched their first literacy programmes “dans labrousse” (in the bush), with in mind, the following nobleobjectives:

1. Alphabétisation des populations rurales;2. Aider la femme et la jeune fille à sortir de l’anonymat ;3. Combattre certaines pratiques ancestrales néfastes:

pratique de la magie, mutilation génitale féminine, etc.;4. Inculquer les règles de l’hygiène et les bases de la santé

reproductive et l’économie sociale ;5. Aider la population rurale a sortir de la précarité ;6. Permettre a la gente féminine de devenir financièrement

indépendante ; and7. Permettre aux familles pauvres de sortir du besoin.

The salient feature of this venture was that it offered acommunity-based program which guaranteed its continuity andsuccess in the long run. The external intervention is limited totechnical help and financial support. By making such aprogram, a homespun product, the target population wouldidentify with it and strive to keep it going for the benefit ofeveryone.

These community-based literacy programmes scored quite asubstantial success in Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin andvarious other sub-Saharan countries because people realizedthat not only they could become literate in their own mothertongue but they could also learn a trade or a business andbecome financially independent.

As matter of fact these literacy mother tongue programmesallowed many communities to become known nationally and toimprove the economic lot of their members and their socialstatus. This unexpected change defeated gradually long-established and long-entertained fatalism and managed to givehope to people who believed deep down that they are “donedamned” and they are born to be poor and die poor.

These literacy programmes gave people faith in their mothertongues and contrary to the pre-conceived idea of the colonialtimes that these idioms are good for religion only, they realized,to their astonishment, that they could be of much use in theireconomic pursuit.

But Mother tongues cannot only be means for economicimprovement of the local population, they can, also, be of muchuse in such important areas as:

1. Raising awareness as to what concerns health issues;2. Improving political education concerning participation in

elections both as voters and candidates;3. Highlighting the benefits of good governance; and4. Encouraging people to undertake literacy pursuits in their

mother tongues.

In his paper entitled “Complacency and Oversight in the use ofMother Tongues in HIV/AIDS Sensitization Campaigns: thecase of Rural Areas in North Eastern Nigeria,” Baba Mai Bello,argues for the use of mother tongues in awareness-raisingcampaigns in rural areas:

“By analyzing and evaluating the present state ofsensitization campaign vis-à-vis the linguisticcompositions and needs of the communities in this region,we argue that the campaigns against HIV/AIDS in ruralareas of this region may be fighting a losing battle sincethey do very little, owing to language limitations, to reachtheir target audience. With the aid of a research-administered questionnaire in select parts of some ruralareas, we aim to demonstrate how the low awareness ofHIV/AIDS as compared to urban areas may be directlylinked to the absence of mother tongues in these

campaigns, suggesting once more the importance ofmother tongues in public awareness campaigns.”

Realizing the importance of mother-tongues in both humandevelopment and nation-building, UNESCO and otherinternational organizations convened an international forum inDakar, Senegal, 26-28 April 2000, during which 150 countriespledged to provide universal basic education: ii

“…ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls,children in difficult circumstances and those belonging toethnic minorities, have access to and complete free andcompulsory primary education of good quality.”

Nadine Dutcher, a researcher affiliated with the Center forApplied Linguistics, based in Washington, DC, discusses in herpaper (Dutcher, 2003) discusses amply in a paper entitled:”Promise and perils of mother tongue education” through thechild’s first language or mother tongue, drawing from thespeaker’s experiences with three national programs, each indifferent phases: iii

1. “those that are in the preparatory phase, such as the mothertongue education program in Vanuatu;

2. relatively new programs, such as the mother tongueprimary education program in Eritrea, and;

3. well-established programs, such as the intercultural andbilingual education program in Guatemala.”

The paper goes on to discusses internal support of mothertongue-first education programs—the decision to begin,language planning and development, materials preparation,teacher selection and training, research and evaluation—andexternal support such as the role of national and localgovernment, community involvement, the difficulties of taking

a pilot program to a national scale, and the role of outsideagencies: iv

“We know that most children who begin their education intheir mother tongue make a better start, demonstrateincreased self-confidence and continue to perform betterthan those who start school in a new language. The outlookfor successful education is brighter when the school buildson the foundation of the mother tongue in teaching asecond and third language. Such is the promise of mothertongue education. But there are perils as well. Theyinclude the possibility of ineffective teaching for a numberof reasons and lack of support for mother tongue educationon the part of teachers, parents and government.”

National Curriculum: Reality Or Fiction?

In the euphoria of national independence from colonial powers,African national governments used a populist slogan: create aneducational system to replace the colonial one. The populationsresponded favorably to this idea whereas specialists shivered atthe thought pointing out, at no avail that such a daunting taskmight take decades to achieve and enormous funds, which bothwere difficult to come by.

Realizing that they cannot stand by their promises, the Africangovernments proceeded to apply some cosmetic changes on theform leaving the content in its colonial shape. As such, allimportant topics were taught in the colonial language, as in thepast, only few insignificant subjects were done in nationallanguages and none in tribal languages or local idioms. As aresult, there were a lot of levels of alienation for the Africanlearner.

In the colonial period, the African learner had to first acquirethe colonial language in the primary level of education before

he could have access to the other levels of education. Becauseof this linguistic hurdle, only the lucky few, the offspring ofnotables and military and political elites made it to the top, inthe long run.

So, in the first decade of independence no serious changes werebrought to the curriculum in content and philosophy, itremained pretty much as it were during the colonial times.

However, African countries encouraged and emboldened by thestand taken by UNESCO as to what concern African nativelanguages, under the aegis of Mokhtar M’bow, started taking amore positive attitude towards their national languages andviewing them as tools for durable development rather thanobstacles. This first started in the field of literacy, after scoringseveral successes and getting a positive response from the focalpopulation, African educational authorities started thinking ofusing mother tongues in school curriculum with theintroduction of Arabic in Chad, Wolof in Senegal, and Pular inMali.

Both R. Wildsmith-Crismarty and M. Gordon from theUniversity of Bayreuth in Germany argue quite convincingly ina paper entitled “Can the use of the Mother Tongue Aid theDevelopment of Concept Literacy in Maths and Science”: v

“The use of non-indigenous languages as media ofinstruction in the educational domain has been perceivedas the reason for the failure of modern science andtechnology to take root in Africa. In South Africa, lownational pass rates at matriculation level bear testimony tothe failure of students to grasp scientific and mathematicalconcepts that are explained in English. If scientificterminology was to be created in the African languages,students might be able to construct correct conceptions.”

The writers of the above-mentioned paper report on a study thatattempted to come up and conceive a multilingual resourcebook as a supplement for mathematics and science teachers: vi

“Core concepts in mathematics, geography, physics,chemistry and biology were identified from senior schoolcurriculum and translated into two African languages,besides Afrikaans and English. The initiative aimed toencourage teachers to use the Resource book to introducethe concepts in the mother tongue in order to aidunderstanding in contexts where the language ofinstruction is English.”

The use of African mother tongues in educational curricula hasbeen for quite some time the focus of interest of the AfricanUnion (AU) with in mind the full rehabilitation of Africanlanguages in education, literature, media and everyday life. TheAU has entrusted the Academy of African Languages(ACALAN) with the mission to fully promote mother tonguesin the African continent “Mother Tongues across border.” Thisproject focuses on the East African region involving 13countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia,Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, The Seychelles, Madagascar,Comoros and Mauritius.

For Naomi L. Shitomi from the School of Arts and SocialSciences of Moi University in Kenya, the above long-awaitedinitiative responds to an urgent need. She states, quiteunambiguously, that mother tongues are weakned byglobalization: vii

“With the advances of English at the international leveland various national levels; and the official standardlanguages at the local levels, e.g. Kiswahili in the EasternAfrica region; and the colonial legacies pertaining to the

language issue, mother tongues continue to be subjected tomarginalization and pressure that often relegates them tonon-prestigious and depreciated positions. The nonarticulation of the position and role of mother tongues invarious national constitutions and insensitive languagepolicies; socio-economic deprivations; ethnicity andnegative politics that demonize indigenous identities andexpressions and further marginalizes them.”

This interesting statement echoes an earlier call of emergencyto attend to African mother tongues expressed in realisticmanner by the preamble of UNESCO’s Language Vitality andEndangerment document: viii

“The extinction of each language results in the irrevocableloss of unique cultural, historical, historical and, ecologicalknowledge. Each language is a unique expression of thehuman experience of the world. Thus, the knowledge ofany single language maybe the key to answeringfundamental questions of the future. Every time a languagedies, we have less evidence for understanding patterns inthe structure and function of human language, humanprehistory, and the maintenance of the world’s diverseecosystems. Above all, speakers of these languages mayexperience the loss of their language as a loss of theiroriginal ethnic and cultural identity.”

Mother Tongue In Education: How To Go About It?

Bearing in mind that Africa is the home of thousands oflanguages, some of which are spoken, maybe, by less than onehundred people, the question is: which languages to use ineducation, and what criteria to use to make such a decision?

The eligible languages are undoubtedly those that are the mostused by speakers in a given country or geographical area. The

criteria that have been used in several African countries are asfollows:

1. Most used language in a given region;2. Most used language in a given country; and3. Trans-national languages.

These three criteria have helped many African countriesdetermine which languages to use in education. The fact is thateven if these languages are not mother tongues, to the majorityof the people, yet they use them as a lingua-franca in variousfields of communication.

Pular and Hausa are trans-national languages that are used bymillions of people in West Africa and even those for whom theyare not true mother tongues, they still consider them to be theirnational idioms and do use them extensively in their dailybusiness more than foreign official languages simply becausethey vehicle an African culture close to the heart of thepopulation and not an alien way of thinking and reasoning.

The success in the use of mother tongues in sub-Saharan Africacan be attributed to diverse factors, some of which are asfollows:

1. Cultural relatedness;2. Linguistic applicability;3. Social readiness;4. Popular adherence; and5. Official receptiveness,

The first five years were field testing years for the wholepackage and the results were truly beyond expectations in mostcountries of the region and mainly in: Mali, Niger, BurkinaFaso, Chad and Senegal.

In the face of these encouraging results in Africa and also inother parts of the world, UNESCO proclaimed in 1999 theInternational mother Language Day with the intention topromote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.According to UNESCO, many studies show that instruction inmother tongue is more effective for achievement not only forthe first language but also for other subject areas and for secondlanguage learning.

It is a known and accepted fact that the use of mother tongue asa medium of instruction in early days of schooling contributesto improved classroom learning and related academicachievement.

But, unfortunately despite all this, mother tongue in educationis still far from being a widely-accepted model, often due tosocial, economic, political and even technological challenges.

So, the question is: why is mother tongue an issue in educationin Africa? What does mother tongue education look like inpractice? Is it truly worthwhile in terms of real costs andbenefits?

Actually education in mother tongue is a world-wide issue andit exists also in developed countries in the form of the issue ofeducation in standard or nonstandard language as reported byCheshire (2005: 2342):

“It might be thought that the main issue for the classroomwould be how best to teach the standard to speakers ofnonstandard varieties, but the situation is complicated bysocial attitudes towards standard and nonstandardlanguage. Stereotypes about “incorrect”, “careless” and“ugly” speech, persist; despite of 40 years ofsociolinguistic work demonstrating that dialects andcreoles are well-formed language systems. Ignorance and

prejudice still exist among teachers – they have beenfound, for example, in recent studies carried out in Britain,Canada, New York City, the Caribbean, and Australia(Siegell1999). Furthermore speakers of the nonstandardlanguages themselves often hold the view that theirlanguage is “broken” and “poor”…”

Fortunately these “biased” ideas are not held by educationsexperts who believe like UNESCO (1968) ix, whose specialistsstated quite unambiguously as early as in 1951, that earlyeducation as well as literacy are best dispensed in mothertongue, at a time when colonial languages had the upper handin education as well as everyday life and vernacular languageswere seen as folklore more than anything else, as Romaine(1995: 242) has rightly pointed out:

“The traditional policy, either implicitly assumed orexplicitly stated which most nations have pursued withregard to various minority groups, who speak a differentlanguage, has been eradication of the nativelanguage/culture and assimilation into the majority one.”

In Turkey where Kurdish is a minority language whoseexistence is not recognized, the situation was even worse. Thusone Kurdish woman who attended a special boarding schoolprovided for Kurdish children described her heartbreakingexperience vividly (Clason and Baksi 1979: 79, 86-7, translatedby Skutnabb-Kangas 1984: 311-12):

“I was seven when I started the first grade in 1962. Mysister, who was a year older, started school at the sametime. We didn’t know a word of Turkish when we started,so we felt totally mute during the first few years. We werenot allowed to speak Kurdish during the breaks, either, buthad to play silent games with stones and things like that.

Anyone who spoke Kurdish was punished. The teachershit us on the fingertips or on our heads with a ruler. It hurtterribly. That is why we were always frightened at schooland didn’t want to go.”

The Case Of Diembering School In Senegal

Linguists, education experts and teachers all agree that todaythat the way out of the educational quagmire in Africa, Asia andmany parts of the world, where the language of the colonizerbecame the official language and as a result the sole vehicle ofeducation, is by rethinking the language or languages ofinstruction (Dutcher, 2003:2) and reassessing totally thesacrosanct foundations of education philosophy inherited fromEuropean nations, that have never faced the problems and perilsof alienating their learners by teaching them in languages otherthan their mother tongues.

The benefits of learning in one’s mother tongue are no longerdisputed. But is it affordable to implement mother tongue as thefirst language of learning and teaching for all learners? And ifit is, where can one find the necessary expertise and ideas tomake it happen? Here below, Rudy Klaas shares the story of amother tongue project in the small village of Diembering,south-west Senegal, which may begin to answer thesequestions: x

“In 1998, school teachers in Diembering attended a mothertongue literacy teacher training event run by SILInternational. The teachers then convinced theirheadteacher to try out the methodology in their school.This first initiative was a success, and convinced parentsthat their children would learn better in their mothertongue. The mother tongue programme that followedsought to reduce the high failure rates in schools that

resulted from students’ poor development of basic literacyskills in their first few years of education. In 2002, thegovernment launched a separate experimental multi-lingual education programme in five locations, includingDiembering.”

This revolutionary approach, for conservative educationofficials in Senegal, bore fruit immediately and shed the lightand attracted attention to mother tongue education. Obviously,the changes witnessed within this school are not accidental, inanyway, but the result of the change of the language ofinstruction.

Klaas reports two kinds of changes basically categorized withinthe area of students’ success in exams and students’ increasedconfidence:

1. 11 out of 18 students who were using mother tongue in alllessons passed their exams. In the two classes using Frenchfor instruction, only two and four students respectively outof 20 passed, and;

2. Mother tongue classes are more student-centered, withmore use of interactive teaching methods. On-goingmonitoring shows that students are more confident andenthusiastic.

Klaas goes on to say with much strength that detailed figuresare not available yet on how much the experimental mothertongue classes cost per student. However, these classes inDiembering produced almost four times the level of exampasses than the traditional classes – but certainly didn’t costfour times as much to run. So the mother tongue class approachis clearly worthwhile. The cost of producing traditional classbooks is not that different from producing the same booktranslated into a mother tongue. Translation costs don’t have to

be high either; some work can be done voluntarily, if time istaken to find motivated translators. Students from mothertongue classes often complete their learning goals faster thanthose in traditional classes. This can reduce overall educationsystem costs, especially if it reduces the number of studentswho repeat years.

And concludes quite convincingly that: xi

“If a country spends less money on education that doesn’twork, it costs them more in the long term than if they spendmore money on education that does work!”

While the Senegal attempted with much courage an importantand beneficial change of direction in language policy and itsaggregate, language use in education, a heated debate is takingplace to no avail both in North Africa (Chtatou, 1994: 43-62)and in South Africa, two different geographical regions havingdifferent cultures and using different colonial languages asvehicles of education.

For Mamphele Ramphele, a South African academic,businesswoman and medical doctor, the post-apartheid SouthAfrican government is failing to recognize the importance ofnational cultures and national languages, one of the means toassert sovereignty as a nation that is proud of its heritage. Shestates quite convincingly that learning through the firstlanguage or mother tongue allows greatly to anchor knowledgeand education in the child’s immediate environment made ofhis family, his community and society at large as well as dailyinteractions and dealings. She goes on to emphasize that pupilswho are taught in the first years of their schooling in theirmother tongue and taught foreign languages as languages andnot vehicles of instruction tend to pass all their exams with

flying colors and to go on further in their education. Other thanthat, pupils become alienated: xii

“Our current approaches alienate children from theircultural roots and make parents’ participation in theeducation of their children difficult. How can theyparticipate in a process in which their primary medium ofcommunication is rendered irrelevant? How can they helptheir own children learn when the language of instructionbecomes a barrier to communication from the first day ofschool? An even more profound impact of this languagepolicy is the undermining of the parental authority soessential to shaping the values and world-view of childrenat this stage of their development. Why should childrenrespect parents who only speak a devalued language?South Africa is not alone in undermining indigenousAfrican languages. Professor Pai Obanya, a retiredNigerian education strategist, suggests that education inAfrica tends to alienate elites from their roots andundermine their capacity to be effective agents of changeto promote sustainable development. “Education is mainlyabout acculturation, to be learned is to be cultured. Startingoff an acculturation process with non-first language tendsto lead to a situation in which the person could becomeknowledgeable but not cultured, and developing a feelingof belonging nowhere.” Elites in Africa are contributing tothis trend by educating their children in private schools,where the teaching of indigenous African languages isminimal. Many see the inability of their children tocommunicate in their mother tongue as a badge ofhonour.”

Mother Tongue Literacy In Mali

It is a known fact that all African countries are multilingual andmulticultural, if not multiracial; this wide variety did not createdisunity in the past, on the contrary it contributed to cementgood relations and fruitful economic ties between differentnations and ethnic groups. However, when colonialismdisembarked on the African soil on the 18th century, to controlthe rich land of this virgin continent, employed the old butefficient tactic of “divide to rule” and thus nations stirred bycolonial agents went on the war path and started exterminatingeach other and playing in the hands of the colonizers.

Encouraged by this course of events, the colonial powers, in thename of progress, imposed their language and culture andsought to downgrade or even destroy local cultures andlanguages. They downgraded these local idioms and pushedthem over the years to total extinction, imposing instead theirlanguage on the educational system, administration and dailybusiness.

On the education scene this had a negative impact on learners,children felt dislocated from their families and culturalbackground at first and later totally alienated. Many of themdropped out of school as a result and went to swell the ranks ofthe already existing armies of the unemployed putting muchunwanted strain on the weak economic fabric of their poorcountries. On the literacy front, things got worse because peopleshied from learning in European languages. Realizing that suchan approach would not lead to any results, whatsoever,UNESCO changed its approach and called upon many Africancountries to adopt local languages. The response wasimmediate; many countries in Black Africa recognized theirlocal idioms and transcribed this political change in their

constitutions and went on to create ministries devoted toliteracy and national languages.

In Mali, the National Directorate of Literacy and Appliedlinguistics (La Direction nationale de l’alphabétisationfonctionnelle et de la linguistique appliquée (DNAFLA)) wascreated in the 70s to promote national languages and use themas a tool in the local development. Since its creation this highlyactive institution has overseen dutifully literacy programmesnationwide and it is credited for much success in the area ofinformal education. As a result of this the Malian governmenthas issued Order No. 89-0341/MEN-DNAFLA of 15 February1989 setting forth the composition and functions of regional andlocal commissions for the elimination of illiteracy. This Ordercreated in each regional and local administrative unit acommission for the elimination of illiteracy under the authorityof the Party and Administration. The duties of the commissionsare as follows:

1. To conceive, coordinate, and manage literacy activities;2. To support and control facilities involved in literacy

activities with a view to adapting them to localcircumstances;

3. To promote and increase the use of national languages; and4. To inform and sensitize the population and mobilize

human, material, and financial resources. Furtherprovisions of the Order set forth the members of variouscommissions, among other things.

Today Mali is cited as one of the prominent successes in literacyin mother tongues in Africa. Indeed DNAFLA, very much field-oriented, started mother tongue literacy programmes in the mostremote bush areas that did not even had a road let alone a schoolor other basic amenities such as running water and electricity.Initially, people were very suspicious of the program; they

thought maybe the government wanted to spy on them to taxthem or something. Men refused to join in and preferred to situnder their village tree, known in francophone Africa by thesobriquet: arbre à palabres (chat tree), and sip tea, whilewomen decided to join in these functional literacy programs.During the first year of the experiment women learned the threeRs and the program to help them become financiallyindependent set up a honey- producing co-operative. At the endof the second year the women became income earners and sawtheir status move up within the society. Men realizing the socialimportance of the exercise decided to join in.

The success of this important program had a domino effect inthe country, today DNAFLA strong with this experience ismoving forward with more assurance and credibility to implantfunctional literacy nationwide and call upon internationalorganization to join in the effort.

The Situation In The Maghreb

While the situation of mother-tongue education is progressingsatisfactorily in sub-Saharan countries and vernacularlanguages are used more and more in literacy programmes andearly education curriculum with good outcome, in North Africathe situations is very fuzzy as what concerns nationallanguages. The pan-Arab ideology, though outdated andvanquished, is still alive in the mind of Arab leaders who seerecognition of national languages as a threat to the supremacyof Arabic language and culture and their shaky dictatorshipsbased on tribal allegiances and conservative religious positions.

Both in Morocco and Algeria, the governments recognisedunder pressure the Amazigh movement and set up for thepurpose government bodies to manage the Amazigh populationcultural needs and requests or make believe so.

In Algeria, on The 27 th of May 1995, after months of unrest inthe streets, schools and universities of Tizi Ouzzou and variousother Algerian provinces, The State Presidency (présidence del’Etat) signed an official decree creating the High Commissionfor Berber Culture (Haut Commissariat del’Amazighité(HCA)).

This institution was created hurriedly to stifle the Berbermovement known among the militants as: Tifsa Imazighen ( theSpring of Berber Culture); However, this decision fell short ofthe expectations of the Berber militants, who wanted to see theirlanguage recognised as an official language alongside Arabicsince the constitution of 1996 did not make this wish a reality.For Abrous, from the University of Bejaia, there was never anintention to recognize the Berber language fully. For himcreating HCA was just a means of triggering a carefully-planned phagocytosis.

In Morocco, the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (InstitutRoyal de la Culture Amazigh (IRCAM)) was created by a royaldecree of King Mohammed VI in Ajdir, Khenifra, a historicalsite of the Berber Middle Atlas on the 17 th of October 2001,after noticeable pressure of the vociferous Berber civil society.The creation of this academic institution and placing it directlyunder the authority of the palace had two main objectives bothserving the authority of the king: checking the inexorablepopularity of the Islamists and using it as an umbrella againstBerber extremism. And since, this institution has served theagenda of the conservative monarchy beyond expectations. xiii

After the official recognition of Tamazight by the Algerianestablishment, the Berbers were faced with very hard choicesconcerning the outright implementation of this highly symbolicpolitical decision in the field, especially in such sensitive areas

as: the script, the introduction of the language in schools,curriculum, training of would-be teachers of the language, etc.

The Berbers of Algeria had to struggle, from the word go, withthe difficult and highly emotional issue of the standardizationof the language that was hitherto oral. Finding an acceptablescript and writing up a grammar was not an easy task, given themultitude of dialects available and the diversity of attitudes andopinions on how to make a national unified language out ofthem.

As to what concerns the script, while researchers, linguists andexperts favored the use of phonetically-modified Latinalphabet, to give the language, according to them, aninternational status and make it accessible to ICT, the studentsin Arabic-speaking areas preferred by far Arabic script that theyalready know and feel comfortable with. Indeed, in Batna 4000students ceased taking their Tamazight classes dispensed inLatin alphabet, unless it is replaced by the Arabic one, as statedby Mrs Bilek, deputy director in charge of Teaching andTraining at HCA (haut Commissariat à l’Amazighité.) xiv

Teaching Tamazight was from the start riddled andhandicapped by a government decision to make it optional forstudents and local education authorities. Thus, though theteaching started right after the official recognition of thelanguage in 1995, yet not much success has been achieved inthe field, on the contrary large number of students dropped outof the courses for reasons still unknown today.

The courses after duly starting in the Wilayas of Al-Bayadh,Tipaza, Oran and Illiz, ceased unexpectedly. As for the coursescontinuing in Biskra (209 students in 2005) and in Tamnrasset(321 students), they are exclusively taken by students comingfrom other Wilayas mainly Boumerdes, Tizi-Ouzou, Béjaia,

and Bouira. Today, only 11 Wilayas are still offering tuition inTamazight language from the 16 initially selected for this. Sorather than get generalized, as it would be expected, theteaching of this language is shrinking dangerously.xv

So, tough the government has created a national centre for theteaching of Tamazight (Centre national pédagogique etlinguistique pour l’enseignement de Tamazight (CNPLET)) bydecree in 2003 and recognized the tongue as a national languageand inscribed it in the constitution of 2003, and likewise hastaken upon itself to offer the course in the exams ofbaccalaureate starting from 2008, yet the militants and Berbernationalists feel total disenchantment with the inexorableregression in interest for Tamazight among the population. Is itdue to the lack of national interest, government hidden hurdlesor the outright speedy rise of Islamism among the Algerian rankand file, who see the recognition of Tamazight and the interestshown for it as an attempt of the omnipresent enemies of Islamto sap the Arabic language, the language of the holy Koran.

All that can be said is that the teaching of Tamazight in Algeriais not a successful experience and this is corroborated quiteclearly by Youssef Merahi, the head of HCA (hautCommissariat à l’Amazighité) in the following terms:

“Treize ans après son entrée à l’école algérienne, en1995,l’enseignement public de la langue amazighe est encore« au stade de l’expérimentation » xvi

He goes on to say that though the language has been granted thestatus of “national language” in the article 3 of the Algerianconstitution, yet unfortunately its teaching cannot be obligatoryin schools. According to the statistics of HCA, the number ofstudents registered in Berber language classes is 160 in Algiersand 66,000 in Tizi Ouzou, which is one of the Berber Wilayas.

As such, because of the optional status of the Berber language,96% of learners are in Berber-speaking Wilayas of Tizi Ouzou,Bouira and Bejaia the remaining 4% are located in the rest ofseven Wilayas of the country. This disparity is also due to thefact that besides Kabyle, Chaoui and Toureg, the other Berberdialects are not taught i.e. Chleuh, Chenaoui and Mozabit.

Thus, the Secretary General of HCA has called upon thegovernment, in general, and the Ministry of National Education,in particular, to change the official attitude towards this nationallanguage and give it a much-needed boost by undertakingteachers training at the university level and helping create adaily newspaper.

In Morocco, teaching in Tamazight various subjects in schoolis still a wishful thinking because even teaching the languagehas not been able to take off the ground, let alone using it as alanguage of tuition alongside Arabic and French. The Moroccaneducational system is definitely schizophrenic in outlook andcontent. Moroccans are taught subjects in Classical Arabic orStandard Arabic for some, while speaking at home and in thestreets various regional variants of Moroccan Arabic,commonly known as Darija, or Tamazight. At the high schoollevel and the university, they find themselves using some of thesame subjects in French and wonder why they had to spend allthese years wasting their time learning a language that cannotbe marketed. No official wants to recognize that actuallyMorocco is not an Arabic-speaking member of the Arab Leaguebut rather a die-hard francophone country.xvii

For the two Berber researchers Hassan Banhakeia et El-HosseinFarhad, the introduction of Tamazight in the Moroccaneducational system is itself unheard of democratic revolution inthe ultra conservative Moroccan scene: xviii

« Bien que la seule et véritable révolution «démocratique»à retenir par l’histoire moderne du Maroc soitl’introduction de l’amazigh dans l’institution scolaire,l’état des lieux de cette langue demeure une questiondifficile à décrire. Cette difficulté émane essentiellementde la nature du sujet où sentiments et raison fusent dans unmême corps, le dit et le fait prennent deux voies nettementdiscordantes. N’y a-t-il pas alors impossibilité réelle deréconciliation entre langues, entre cultures, entre visionscollectives au sein de la société? En fait, il n’y a pasd’institution meilleure ou plus efficace pour développerl’amazigh et pour lui rendre sa véritable considération ausein de la communauté que l’école (enseignement,apprentissage, formation, information, idéalisation,symbolisation…), et pour nous de jauger l’authenticité ounon de cette réconciliation (qui pourrait mener vers laréelle démocratie). L’on parle alors d’ouverture surl’amazigh. Néanmoins, une question reste posée: l’écolemarocaine «déjà bilingue», c’est-à-dire au fonddoublement ségrégationniste, peut-elle vraiment recevoirle «corps amazigh» comme étant un élément propre,légitime et vivant? »

For the two researchers the total failure of the Moroccaneducational system, after half century of independence, can beattributed undeniably to the outrageous all out Arabization ofthe system. Pupils find themselves face to face learning first alanguage they are not familiar with and later taking specializedsubjects in this same language, they can hardly understand letalone master. In self-defense they reject both the language andthe subjects and end-up as hardened dropouts totally alienatedfrom their culture and even their society.

Until now, the Moroccans have miserably failed to resolve theenigma of their linguistic identity and as a result the public

school continues to pay the price: And according to the above-mentioned researchers, the main reason for the bankruptcy ofthe Moroccan educational system is undoubtedly the absence ofboth mother-tongue and culture from the system. Thiseducational system is out of contact with the reality of thelearner because it is pan-Arab, oriental, Islamist and Wahhabi,in other words it is beyond the cultural reality of the receiverand therefore he rejects it with all his might and moves on tosomething else, instead: xix

« Il demeure évident que la principale raison de l’échec ausein de l’enseignement marocain est l’absence de la languematernelle et de la culture propre: l’amazighité. L’enfantne se découvre pas, et l’école va le dépayser davantage.Comment se présente-t-elle l’éducation sans l’essence ducitoyen placé dans l’Histoire? Sans l’attache à la terre?Sans l’attache au Temps? Sans l’attache à ses spécificitésd’être humain? Le système d’enseignement qui est denature spécifiquement panarabiste, orientaliste, islamiste,wahhabite… s’en passe complètement: il est alors unprogramme de ruptures. Aussi les politiquesd’enseignements sont-elles faites par des ministresarabistes et / ou wahhabites qui opèrent des ruptures«historiques» au lieu de ramender les parties de ce corpsmillénaire. »

Since the creation of the IRCAM in 2001, this institution tookupon itself to introduce Tamazight in school, but like in Algeriathis proved to be a difficult task given that most of the decision-makers in the government are people who see Tamazight as apersonal threat to their political career. So after many meetingswith different ministries and government bodies, Tamazightwas officially introduced to the Moroccan educational systemhurriedly by the authorities as if to prove that it is not a viablevehicle of education.

Introducing a new language within a given educational systemwithout prior:

1. Field study of the pedagogic needs;2. Training of trainers (TOT);3. Training of teachers;4. Setting up a curriculum; and5. Devising of textbooks: for both teacher and student and

field-testing them.

is condemning it to programmed failure, and that is exactlywhat happened. IRCAM continues to maintain verbally afloatthe idea, but in principle it is dead for the reasons stated aboveand most of all for the fact that learning Tamazight is optionaland this means for many education officials not even botheringtrying to teach it, let alone work towards making the conceptwork. For Ali Khadaoui, a Berber studies expert, Tamazight hasno constitutional status and as such no future: xx

« La langue amazighe n’a pas de statut légal inscrit dans laConstitution. Ce qui rend son enseignement publicfacultatif et dérisoire, comme le stipule la CharteNationale de d’Education et de la Formation, seuldocument légal servant de cadre de référence à tous lesacteurs de l’Education et de la Formation au Maroc.

-cette langue n’est enseignée que dans une dizained’établissements dans l’ensemble du pays ;Cette absence de statut officiel fixé le pouvoir politique etinscrit dans la constitution rend aussi difficilela construction des curricula valables pour cette languepourtant parlé quotidiennement par les trois quarts aumoins de la population.– une formation au rabais de quelques jours, dispensée pardes personnes non qualifiées à des personnes qui, souvent,

ne connaissent même pas la langue qu’elles sont appeléesà enseigner. »

Not only mother tongue is in on the limp in North Africa inschool curriculum, but there is not even a thought aboutintroducing it in literacy programmes. Though governmentshave recognized the existence of Tamazight, this recognitionremains basically a political move not meant to be fullyimplemented in the field. Otherwise, before introducingTamazight in schools, they should have taken into considerationsub-Saharan countries experience and started with literacy,bearing in mind that the most disadvantaged people both inMorocco and Algeria are Berber women and girls, who live intotal seclusion in high and inaccessible mountains. This femaleilliteracy has negative effects on the education of children,family hygiene, and reproductive health, to say the least. xxi

These areas remain badly in need of community-based literacyprogrammes in Tamazight, the very same programmes thathave had astounding success and still do in such counties asMali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Senegal, etc. because theyhave not only allowed females to become literate but also tostart small businesses or co-operatives, and thus doing becomefinancially-independent and contribute to the development oftheir home village and area.

All in all, mother-tongue education in North Africa has longway to go before it becomes a profitable venture for the poorpopulation.

Conclusion

After decades of education in foreign languages inherited fromthe colonial period and deeply ingrained in the psyche of somepoliticians, decision makers and educators, sub-Saharan Africais waking up to a new reality: durable development can only be

achieved genuinely by returning to the roots and rehabilitatingfully and irrevocably national languages and cultures andaccepting cultural diversity as a symbol of grandeur and notdecrepitude.

With this reality in mind, many African countries haverevamped their language and education policies and reassessedtheir development priorities in the light of this change. Fullyrecognizing national languages is tantamount not only todeveloping education and giving it a new direction but also torevive the oral cultures and preserve them from extinctionespecially at a time of threatening globalization blown out ofproportion by digital revolution.

In North Africa, a lot has still to be done in this area, startingurgently with the full recognition of national languages andcultures and using them in schools and all walks of life.

You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatou on Twitter:@Ayurinu

Endnotes:i. Mother tongue is the language that one learns from parentsand relatives. A baby starts becoming familiar with mothertongue while in the womb. After birth, when crying if a motherspecial language is used, the baby will stop crying and startlistening. As time progresses, a child learns mother tongue byhearing the words again and again and gradually starts usingthem. Using its mother tongue a baby expresses its feelings tothose around it.ii. Cf. UNESCO 2000. Para. 7.iii. Cf. Dutcher, 2003:1.iv. ibidv. Paper read at the conference on “Globalization and MotherTongues in Africa,” held at the Faculty of Letters and

Humanities at Mohammed V University-Agdal, in Rabat on 19-20 June 2009.vi. ibidvii. Mother Tongues across Borders: the Case of EasternAfrican Region,” paper read at the conference on:“Globalization and Mother Tongues in Africa, held at theFaculty of Letters and Humanities at Mohammed V University-Agdal, in Rabat on 19-20 June 2009.viii. Cf. UNESCO 2003: 2ix. Cf. UNESCO (1968) « The use of vernacular language inEducation: the report of the UNESCO meeting of specialists in1951.x.http://www.eenet.org.uk/resources/eenet_newsletter/news12/page10.phpxi. ibidxii. http://www.africanvoices.co.za/xiii. n his speech, during the ceremony of the creation of theRoyal institute of the Amazigh culture in Ajdir, the kingMohammed VI set up the limits of this institution that he wouldoversee himself to avoid any cultural or political problems,whatsoever :« La promotion de l’amazighe est une responsabilité nationale,car aucune culture nationale ne peut renier ses racineshistoriques. Elle se doit, en outre, de s’ouvrir et de récuser toutcloisonnement, afin qu’elle puisse réaliser le développementindispensable à la pérennité et au progrès de toute civilisation.Ainsi, en s’acquittant de ses missions de sauvegarde, depromotion et de renforcement de la place de la culture amazighedans l’espace éducatif, socioculturel et médiatique national,l’Institut Royal de la culture amazighe lui donnera une nouvelleimpulsion en tant que richesse nationale et source de fierté pourtous les Marocains. »xiv. Cf. http://www.algerie-dz.com/article7301.html

xv. ibidxvi. Cf. http://www.musikamazigh.com/actualité/140/makepdfxvii. Cf. Chtatou, 1994. Language policy in Morocco and thesticky linguistic situation of this country.xviii. Cf. http://tawiza.ifrance.com/Tawiza106/banhakeia.htmxix. ibidxx. http://ageddim.jeeran.com/archive/2008/2/471641.htmlxxi. Cf. UNESCO 2005

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