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economic mainstream. In this regard, while discussing language, dominance and
control in Africa, Wolff 24 expresses a similar view, when he states that:
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Post-independence language policies in Africa, however, were
largely in favour of maintaining or installing the colonial foreign
language as official language of the newly-independent country.
This worked much to the benefit of the former colonial masters: all
official dealings with the new governments could be conducted in the
language of colonialism. Likewise, the new governments saw no other
way of smoothly taking over control and power from the colonial
master than insisting on official monolingualism in their favour.
Any change of language policies in favour of national languages
to complement, if not replace, the foreign colonial languages as
official languages on the national level in the long run, would put
them at a disadvantage in terms of communication and control. The
ex-colonial foreign language, therefore, comes in handy for “mass
exclusion” from control and access to power and resources.
The language policies described here have also created a fertile ground for the
thriving of negative attitudes towards African languages. As a result, there have
been a widespread believe that African languages are linguistically ill-equipped
and cannot be used in techno-scientific domains, including the cyberspace. On
the false ill-preparedness of African languages, Negash has this to say 25 :
Some say that African languages may be effective for daily
interaction but not for coping with the demand of modern, high
technology, science, the arts, literature, cinema, the internet,
international communication of diplomacy and trade, etc., all
aspects of a too complex contemporary world.
Unwittingly, Africans buy into this belief and regard linguistic diversity that is
the hallmark of the African linguistic mosaic shown in the diagram presented
above as rather being a liability than an asset, and therefore that the exclusive
use of former colonial languages should prevail over African languages. This
is why the former colonial languages are regarded as passports for upward
mobility and, as such, they are given preference at the expenses of African
languages. Tied to the beliefs, there is a plethora of factors militating against
the development, promotion and use of African languages in all domains of
society, including cyberspace.
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Wolff, Ekkehard (2011). Background and history – language politics and planning in Africa. In Ouane,
Adama and Christine Glanz (2011) (Eds.) Optimizing Learning, Education and Publishing in Africa: The
Language Factor: A Review and Analysis of Theory and Practice in Mother Tongue and Bilingual Education
in Sub-Saharan Africa, Tunis: UIL/ADEA: 51-100.
25
Negash (2005:11).