UNESCO literacy prizes for Mozambique & Madagascar

On Wednesday 22 July, UNESCO announced the recipients of the 2015 prizes for literacy efforts. Organizations in five countries (of which two in Africa - Madagascar and Mozambique) each received one of two categories of prizes:

• The UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize (2 annually)
• Associação Progresso, Mozambique
• National Institute of Education
  National Institute of Education, Sri Lanka
• The UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy (3 annually)
• La Plateforme des associations chargées de l’ASAMA et du post-ASAMA, Madagascar
• La Escuela Juan Luis Vives de Valparaíso, Chile
• Svatobor, Slovakia

King Sejong Literacy Prize

Of the two prizes, the King Sejong prize, named after the Korean monarch who designed Hangul (the Korean script), "gives special consideration to the promotion of mother-tongue languages in developing countries."

The Associação Progresso was described in the UNESCO release as "a Mozambican nongovernmental organization recognized for its effective ‘Literacy in Local Languages, Springboard for Gender Equality’ programme in Mozambican languages. It has achieved good results by building on international standards and research, training facilitators and involving the community in designing, monitoring and improving delivery."

Some background on Associação Progresso is available in a 2009 report mentioning its activities:*

“This case involves a partnership between Associação Progresso in Mozambique, and CODE, a Canadian organisation specialised in the promotion of quality primary education. Progresso and CODE have been working to increase the quality of education in the two Northern provinces of Mozambique for over 15 years. The activities in their joint programme, 'Promotion of a Literate Environment in Mozambique,' include the provision of reading and learning materials in Portuguese and local languages, skills development for primary teachers and adult literacy teachers, and training of education officers in specialised functions such as education planning, in-service training, and the monitoring of teaching and learning.

“Progresso and CODE work in close cooperation with the Mozambican Ministry of Education and Culture at the national and provincial levels. Their experience and innovative practices have influenced government policy, notably through the inclusion of a bilingual curriculum in the Government of Mozambique’s Education Sector Strategic Plan. ...”

It is unfortunate that such descriptions do not name the languages involved. If the activities are still concentrated in the north of the country, the languages might include for example: Makhuwa; Lomwe; Yao; and Nyanja.

Confucius Prize for Literacy 

The other prize, named after the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, recognizes "the activities of outstanding individuals, governments or governmental agencies and NGOs whose work in literacy serves rural adults and out-of-school youth, particularly women and girls." Often these also involve first languages.

According to the UNESCO release, La Plateforme des associations chargées de l’ASAMA et du post-ASAMA (Platform of Associations in Charge of ASAMA** and Post-ASAMA) is "an NGO in Madagascar that developed a comprehensive approach to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by establishing partnerships between the national authorities and 66 other NGOs. The programme provides a range of literacy courses for illiterates who account for 40% of the population, technical and vocational training at all levels and supports graduates in their efforts to find employment or start their own business."

It is not specified which language or languages are used, and I haven't found further information on that question elsewhere, but it may include literacy in Malagasy.

Past African winners of UNESCO literacy prizes

In past years, other African organizations have also received UNESCO literacy prizes. A list of African awardees over the previous seven years is presented below, with brief information on languages, where available.

Year	King Sejong Literacy Prize	Confucius Prize for Literacy
2014	L’Association pour la promotion de l’éducation non formelle du Burkina Faso (BF-APENF), Burkina Faso. - "activities in five local languages"	L’Association algérienne d’alphabétisation « IQRAA » (which means "read" in Arabic), Algeria. Bridges to the Future initiative of Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy, South Africa & International Literacy Institute, USA. - "reaches primary school children and illiterate adults through a specially designed multilingual computer program that tries to bring a more cohesive learning experience to the learner."
2013	La Fédération des associations de promotion des langues du Guéra, Chad.  - literacy in maternal languages of Guéra region	Savoir pour mieux vivre (SAPOMIVIE), Ivory Coast. - literacy in maternal languages and a publication "translated into 23 languages including Senufo and Bambara. Maninka, Attié, Abidji, Kulango or Dan syllabaries are used." (Gban is also mentioned)  Directorate of Adult Education of the Ministry of Education, Namibia.  - "basic literacy course consists of a 3-year training, averaging some 240 hours per annum. The first two years combine basic mother tongue functional literacy, offered in eleven local languages and life skills. English is introduced during the third part of the training."
2012	National Adult Literacy Programme, Pentecostal Church, Rwanda. - (no specific mention of languages) (Honorable mention) Programme d’alphabétisation fonctionnelle à l’intention des femmes et des filles à travers des groupes de femmes et la formation tout au long de la vie of the Direction de l’alphabétisation et de l’éducation des adultes, Niger. - "covers not only reading, writing and counting in the mother tongues but also life skills and practical and productive activities" (Honorable mention) Programme d’alphabétisation et de post-alphabétisation : autonomisation et intégration socio-économique des femmes marocaines of the Direction de l’élimination de l’analphabétisme, Morocco.  - (no specific mention of languages)	(no African recipients this year)
2011	Service national d’alphabétisation, Burundi. - "The government-funded courses take place in more than 900 centres across the country and are delivered in the national language, Kirundi."	Collectif ALPHA UJUVI, D.R. Congo. - "... Peace Hut scheme ... runs alongside literacy classes for adults and young people in both Swahili and French."
2010	General Directorate of Adult Training, Cape Verde. - "Portuguese language lessons draw on real life in Cape Verde and are held in the national language, Crioulo, in all of the 17 education and adult education centres scattered throughout the archipelago."	Females for Families program of the Governrate of Ismailia, Egypt. - (no specific mention of languages) (Honorable mention) Women Land Rights Project, Coalition of Women Farmers, Malawi. -  (no specific mention of languages)
2009	Tin Tua, Burkina Faso. - "curriculum in five local languages covering basic literacy and numeracy skills along with practical knowledge about health, hygiene, human rights, gender and farming."	(no African recipients this year)
2008	Reflect and HIV/AIDS program of People's Action Forum, Zambia. - "The Jury admired the association’s use of local languages in teaching the rural women in their literacy programmes to be autonomous, following the motto: 'rather than wait for government to decide, people should be involved in the decision-making process.'"	Adult and Non-Formal Education Association (ANFEAE), Ethiopia. Operation Upgrade, South Africa. [information on the above two awardees from Wikipedia]

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* Réal Lavergne and Jacqueline Wood, "Civil Society and Aid Effectiveness: Exploration of Experience and Good Practice. A Reference Document" (2nd ed.), Prepared for the Advisory Group on Civil Society and Aid Effectiveness, August 31, 2009.
** ASAMA stands for Asa sekoly avotra ho an'ny Malagasy in Malagasy and Action Scolaire d'Appoint pour les Malagasy Adolescent in French.

Ethnologue: "National" and "Principal" languages in Africa

Since raising the issue of Ethnologue's use of the term national language last December, that resource has undergone some revisions. Among the changes is replacing the problematic heading of "National Languages" (problematic because it is used in various distinct ways) with "Principal Languages" on the "Country" tab of the country information pages.

This is a positive step as far as it goes (I'll come back to that below), but the new heading raises new issues. I believe these are important to review since Ethnologue is a major reference on the world's languages, and as such its presentation of data will influence how people (especially those from outside the region concerned) understand or misunderstand linguistic situations, with the potential to influence approaches taken to extension, public education, training, etc. for emergencies like the ebola outbreak in West Africa.

What counts as a "Principal language"?

A  reader looking up information on the languages of Niger would first come to the "Country" tab of the Niger page (a screenshot is pictured). On it, they would see under "Principal Languages," one language, French. A logical assumption the reader might make is that this language is unambiguously the "most important, consequential, or influential" (per Merriam-Webster.com's definition) in the country. But what of Hausa, spoken by perhaps half the population as a first language, which Ethnologue itself notes is also "the main trade language of Niger"? Or Zarma, spoken by 18-25% of the population,^* which although concentrated in the west of the country, represents a number greater than the number of French speakers (5-15% of the population)? The Peace Corps program in Niger for many years (before its closure) prioritized Hausa and Zarma language training for rural development volunteers since French, however important on the governmental level, was not as useful where they worked.

So where to draw the line in what is considered "principal" is a new problem. It turns out, however, that Ethnologue has a narrower definition of "Principal Languages":

"Languages that have been identified as having a function at the nation-wide level are listed here. This includes all the languages that function at the national level as a working language or a language of identity or both, whether this is by statute or is the de facto situation. For a fuller discussion, see Official recognition."

But even stated this way, couldn't Hausa, as the main trade language and one of Niger's statutory "national languages," still be considered a "principal language" in its own right? Also, from personal observation, Hausa as well as Zarma have been used de facto in local government work (as spoke languages), even though everyone knows French is the de jure language of governance. So there are several criteria on which one might add Hausa and perhaps Zarma as "Principal Languages."

 

In this regard, the treatment of  Senegal (another example used in the previous posting) seems even more problematic. Here too, only French is listed in the category "Principal Languages," although Wolof is the most widely spoken language in the country, as well as being statutorily a national language. 

Similarly, in Mali, Bambara is most widely spoken, and by a number of people larger than those speaking French. It is also statutorily a national language.But only the official language French is listed among "Principal Languages."

Part of the reason for citing these examples is that by a common understanding of this new category "principal language," and arguably by a broader reading of Ethnologue's definition of the term, major languages other than the official one in some countries would seem to qualify. Certainly what one counts as "principal language" in many multilingual countries may depend on the criteria used, and a that in turn would depend on the intended application.

Levels of official recognition

One criterion in Ethnologue's treatment of "Principal Languages" in these countries is evidently the kind of official recognition involved. So in the case of South Africa, which has eleven official languages, all eleven are listed as "Principal Languages." Same for Chad's two designated official languages - French and Arabic.

However, for the Republic of the Congo, three languages are listed as "Principal Languages": French, which is official; and Kituba and Lingala, which are statutorily national and vehicular languages (which seems similar to Hausa in Niger, Wolof in Senegal, and Bambara in Mali).

What of countries where no language is designated in the constitution or legislation as official? (This is the case for quite a number of countries, including the US.) For Kenya and Tanzania, which each have English and Swahili as de facto official languages, both are "Principal Languages" for each.

On the other hand, the page for Sierra Leone lists only English (de facto official) under "Principal Languages" even though Krio is used more widely (by at least 90% of the population). Though not formalized, Krio in practical terms could be regarded as a "principal language" of the country, since it is so widely used and arguably serves in part as a language of identity (another criterion in Ethnologue's definition). English, on the other hand, is reportedly understood well by only 13% of Sierra Leonean women - how principal is it from their perspective?

How useful are Ebola messages in English when only 13% of women in Sierra Leone understand English? @TranslatorsWB
— Lori Thicke (@lorithicke) October 13, 2014

An exhaustive review is beyond the purpose of this posting, but from the various examples, it seems that a narrow application of Ethnologue's definition for "Principal languages" on that important first page of country language information gives an incomplete picture of the linguistic reality in a number of African countries.

Suggestions regarding "Principal Languages"

Changing the heading "National Languages" to "Principal Languages" on the "Country" tab of Ethnologue's country information pages was a positive step for presenting first-glance information on the linguistic situations of multilingual African countries. A next step would be to review the criteria for giving languages that categorization. It might be useful to think of this as a way to give the readers a quick sense of the linguistic reality, which in multilingual states may be complicated, involving more than one language playing important roles in different ways.

Part of the problem is using a commonly understood term like "principal" in a very limited way, requiring the reader to find the specific definition and adjust their understanding accordingly. I suspect that many readers will, like I did when first looking at the page, assume the common definition of "principal."

Maybe a key would be to make the definition of "principal language" less dependent on the EGIDS framework. That would lead to another problem, mentioned above in the case of Hausa and Zarma in Niger - where to draw the line in a more flexible application of the term. One way to address this would be short annotation highlighting the criteria used. For example (not advocating this but giving as example), one could list for Niger: French (official); Hausa (main trade language). Or for Senegal: French (official); Wolof (most widely spoken). Sierra Leone: English (official); Krio (most widely spoken; identity). And so on.

"National language," cont'd

When one gets past the "Country" tab of the country information pages to the "Languages" and "Status" tabs, Ethnologue still uses "national language" in the way it previously did. This is again a question of nomenclature, important I would argue in the case of African countries that use the term in different ways (see the previous posting on this topic for a more complete discussion). Ethnologue has evidently reduced its use of the term "official language," so maybe "national language" could also be replaced by a term not already used in divergent senses or (like "principal language") carrying a generic meaning beyond that intended.

Concluding note

As in my previous posts about Ethnologue's content, I would like to stress that the purpose here is to offer constructive criticism and contribute to improving this important resource.

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* There do not appear to be any published percentage estimates of speakers of Zarma (including closely related and mutually intelligible varieties of Songhai) in Niger. When I worked there in 2000-04, the common understanding was that 25% of the country's population spoke it (as a first language). Ethnologue's 2006 estimate of 2.35 million speakers would be about 18% of the 2006 total estimated population of 13.248 million.

I will return later to the topic of work on localization (or localisation - that's why logograms such as l10n are useful) efforts later, but wanted to mention two New York Times articles - one on education that didn't mention African languages and the other on ICT that did. The latter, "Using a New Language in Africa to Save Dying Ones" (Marc Lacey, 12 November 2004) was a welcome recognition of localization. I posted some comments on it on the A12n-forum (link to the list in the left hand column).

Re the article on schools, "In Africa, Free Schools Feed a Different Hunger" (Celia Dugger, 24 October 2004), it brought up the jump in primary school attendance in many African countries following governments' elimination of enrollment fees. This is certainly positive, but unfortunately the article did not mention the issue of language of instruction. My letter to the author, Ms. Dugger, follows. It is the third time that I've noted similar oversights in the NYTimes - by Somini Sengupta on girls' education in Benin, and Nicolas Kristof on schooling in Chad (for the latter, see my entry in this blog for 25 March 2004) - and the third time I've written...

I appreciated your article on primary education in Africa but wish that you had brought up the issue of language of instruction in it. In most of the continent, instruction is in a second language, generally English or French. There are reasons for this, and there are costs. Unfortunately the reasons are unquestioned (some are unfounded negative assumptions about bilingual education and about African languages themselves) and the costs are not calculated (starting learning in a second language is an additional challenge to students - no wonder so many need to repeat and, as you point out, in Uganda "more than half of third graders still performed poorly in math and English"; it reduces potential parental & community involvement in their children's education, and arguably has longer term consequences for the very development goals education is meant to address). 

The case of Giriama [the article featured a visit to a school in a Giriama-speaking part of Kenya] might have been a particularly good one to consider. With about half a million speakers according to Ethnologue http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=NYF, it is neither a major tongue nor negligible. The issues of cost of materials and training teachers are valid concerns - though even in the case of more widely spoken languages these are often excuse by donors and governments to focus uniquely on the official language. The issue of medium of instruction has been around for years and merits at least mention.

If you come back to the education in Africa topic it may be interesting to look at the efforts to establish education in indigenous languages in a bilingual system in Mali. (Save the Children has worked a number of years on this.)

Thanks for you attention to this and all the best.

Mi eggii, yaltii Niizer gilla balɗe sappo. Korka duu timmii gilla balɗe nay. Joonin miɗo waɗa jahangal ley Ameriik, fadde hootude galle amin ley Assiin.

Well beyond Niamey now. Events moving quickly, and too much to do, to maintain this blog regularly.

Some interesting meetings in DC when I was there. Mostly my time in this part of the trip is spent working on refining a presentation and paper.

In the meantime some other writing. One quick note to the authors of a report from last year, The impact of cybercafés on information services in Uganda, asking about how the dimension of language (multilingual ICT) fir in their research. It was not mentioned that I could see in what was otherwise an interesting article (similar issue to a recent survey of users' evaluation of content in Nairobi which did not broach the issue of language either - see my posting in this blog of 21 Feb. 2004). My note to the authors of the Uganda survey included the following:

A number of significant questions come to mind that are hard to ignore in a polyglot society such as that of Uganda: How are maternal and vehicular languages such as Luganda and Swahili used currently in cybercafés and in local web content etc.? What are user practices and preferences in this regard? What are the attitudes and knowledge levels of cybercafé operators, governmental authorities and development projects to exploring and utilizing the multilingual potential of the technology? What different uses might different languages have in the evolution of cybercafés and MCTs as they respond to the realities and needs of the country?

Another letter was in response to part of a dispatch "Is there any hope for Africa" by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof. On a trip to Chad and Sudan he commented on, among other things, education and its importance. Like so many who evaluate the African development situation, he sees the importance of education, but not some of the complexities in the issue brought about by the way education is approached. I offered the following (edited slightly here):

I just looked at your dispatch re education in Chad with great interest. You touch on some important aspects of this vital issue but there's one missing factor - that of the language(s) of instruction.

Since colonial times in most of Africa, formal education has tended to be approached as a monolingual agenda, relying entirely on European languages. There were and are various reasons and rationalizations for this then and now, but relatively little attention I'm aware of to discussing the costs for individuals and societies of ignoring people's first languages in education.

For one thing it is a sink-or-swim thing for kids arriving in school the first day to encounter an unfamiliar or little heard language. For another it puts up a barrier to greater parental involvement in their children's schooling. I've also been working on the hypothesis that this monolingual approach means for most school leavers what amounts to an impaired bilingualism/multilingualism, where they plateau at a certain functional level in their first language(s) and never attain a high level in the school language. (Education is not my field of specialization - that is rural development - but I've become increasingly interested in the language & basic education issues over the course of several years work in and study of West Africa.)

The oft cited main reason for not having any instruction in any African tongue is that there are "too many" languages. This is so often repeated that it is accepted as dogma even when the local realities would not prohibit use of relevant local languages at least in the first years of primary ed. From that flow other justifications like the cost of producing materials in diverse maternal languages or the fear that teaching children in anything other than the language inherited from colonization will lead to divisiveness.

All such questions and issues need to be examined critically and fairly, but at the moment it seems that the topic of language of instruction is largely omitted from the discourse. Odd, to say the least, in as multilingual a region as sub-Saharan Africa. I previously wrote Ms. Sengupta about this following her story on girls' education in Benin. One of the leads I gave her was Lynn Lederer, director of Save the Children in Mali, which has been deeply involved in Mali's successful program for first language primary education in that country. There are certainly other programs of this genre and I would think a very interesting article or two on what the choice of languages of instruction means for students and communities.

A quick addendum - lest there be any misunderstanding, the issue is not monolingual African language education instead of monolingual French or English, but rather effective bilingual approaches that incorporate at least early instruction in first languages, such as what is being implemented in Mali. There are other approaches that may use African languages for instruction or as subjects at higher levels. Africa is complex and various such solutions could be adapted as appropriate in different places.

Part of the reason for this concern is that outside interest in advancing basic education in Africa seems mostly to ignore the multilingual nature of African societies. The role of African governments (elites) in this tends to be to more or less passively reinforce the status quo (monolingual instruction in French or English). Between the two, it is hard to generate positive evolution in educational approaches.