IMLD 2020: "Languages without borders"

The theme of this year's International Mother Language Day (IMLD2020; 21 February 2020) - "Languages without borders" - seems especially appropriate for Africa. So many (almost all?) African languages - or more accurately, populations having a common mother tongue - are divided by borders established during the colonial period (and prudently maintained in the interests of peace). And people on opposite sides of these borders continue to use their languages, which former Malian president Alpha Oumar Konaré once referred to as "sutures" linking neighboring African countries.

The African Academy of Languages (ACALAN), has had structures in place for some years to work on African "cross-border vehicular languages," which are larger in numbers of speakers and geographic extend of use. In her message on the occasion of IMLD2020, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay calls attention to all cross-border languages - all mother tongues that cross borders:

For IMLD 2020, UNESCO has chosen the theme of languages without borders to draw attention to the way in which all languages, including mother tongues, contribute to intercultural dialogue and peace. Indeed, throughout the world, numerous cross-border languages bring their speakers closer to one another, turning borders into bridges instead of barriers.

40% of people not educated in mother languages

In  her IMLD2020 message, Mme Azoulay also calls out another fact that is particularly relevant to Africa:

Moreover, mother tongues are valuable allies in our efforts to achieve quality education for all. In fact, as UNESCO studies have shown, studying in a language which is not one’s own interferes with learning and increases inequalities. Yet according to the most recent estimates, 40% of the world’s citizens find themselves in this situation. Bilingual or multilingual education based on students’ mother tongue not only encourages learning, but also contributes to understanding and dialogue among peoples.

As with all IMLDs, we hold out the hope that this observance may inspire more progress in use and development of the diverse languages that are productive and charished parts of our common human heritage.

African Regional Meeting for IYIL2019

The International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019 (IYIL2019) has involved various regional meetings. The African Regional Meeting for IYIL2019 is being held in Addis Ababa on 30-31 July, midway through the year.

A Concept Note for the meeting details the purpose, agenda, structures, and participants. I will copy below the statement from the conference webpage (which appears to be almost identical to a section in the Concept Note, from which the title is borrowed). This is in the typical formal language of UN meetings, but useful to have available for possible future reference and discussions.

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Purpose, Objectives and Outcomes of the IYIL2019 Regional Meeting

With a view to empowering Indigenous language speakers and users, UNESCO and the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN), as African Union’s specialized institution, mandated to develop and promote African languages in partnership with the languages inherited from Africa’s colonial past in the perspective of linguistic diversity and convivial multilingualism, the representatives of Member States and Indigenous members of the Steering Committee for the organization of the International Year of Indigenous Languages, and Member States of the African Union, regional and international institutional partners, as well as supported by the UNESCO Intergovernmental Information for All Programme (IFAP), are organizing the IYIL2019 African Regional Meeting on Indigenous languages on 30 and 31 July 2019 at the Headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The African Regional Meeting (IYIL2019 Regional Meeting) will contribute to the implementation of the Action Plan for Organizing the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages (Annex V), in particular to the established tentative road map towards achieving strategic objectives and expected impacts through the elaboration of a Global Strategic Outcomes Document.

The objectives of the African Regional Meeting (IYI2019 Regional Meeting) in Addis Ababa are to:

• Bring together a diverse range of stakeholders, including representatives of ACALAN’s working structures in the national governments of member states of the African Union, Indigenous organizations, scholars and experts in the field of Indigenous languages, and others for a constructive dialogue on Indigenous languages and related issues in the African regions;
• Promote the human rights and fundamental freedoms, with special focus on support, access and promotion of Indigenous languages and better integration into the policy and strategic frameworks, research agendas and development of concrete tools and services;
• Identify existing challenges, practical solutions and good practices among different stakeholders working in language transmission, documentation, safeguarding, policy development, education, research, and promotion and private sector; and,
• Raise awareness on the importance of Indigenous languages, linguistic diversity and multilingualism for sustainable development and provide guidance to the stakeholders in the implementation of international, regional and national commitments related to language development.

The expected Outcomes of the African IYI2019 Regional Meeting in Addis Ababa are to:

• Produce a Regional Outcomes Document elaborated jointly by all stakeholders, including concrete recommendations and identified actions on support for, access to and promotion of Indigenous languages and empowerment of Indigenous languages speakers and learners in Africa;
• Provide a Template for other Regional Meetings in the context of IYIL 2019; and,
• Provide an opportunity to forge new partnerships and networks among various stakeholders to further the exchange of best practices, information sharing and collaboration.

The IYIL2019 Regional Meeting will include discussions on the following five key areas identified and presented in the Action Plan (Ref.: E/C.19/2018/8). These include:

• Increasing understanding, reconciliation and international cooperation, including a role of non-governmental organizations;
• Creation of favorable conditions for knowledge-sharing and dissemination of best practices with regards to Indigenous languages, including data collection, research and application of technological solutions;
• Integration of Indigenous languages into standard setting, including intersectoral approaches across different domains such as education, public administration, innovation and research with a special focus on language technology;
• Empowerment through capacity building, including young Indigenous girls and women, migrant population and diaspora; and,
• Growth and development through elaboration of new knowledge including data collection, research and innovation.

Expert Meeting on the Transcription & Harmonization of African languages, Niamey, 17-21 July 1978

Niger's National Assembly, where the 1978 meeting was
formally opened. (Source: Britannica.com)

Forty years ago today, the Meeting of Experts on the Transcription and Harmonization of African Languages began in Niamey, Niger. Along with the 1966 meeting in Bamako, it was one of the more significant of a series of meetings* organized in Africa with the assistance of UNESCO to deal with questions relating to standardization of the written forms of African languages.

This expert meeting was at once less ambitious than the 1966 Bamako meeting - seeking "harmonization" rather than "unification" of systems for writing - and wider in scope - including representatives from more countries around the continent:Angola; Benin; Burundi; Cameroun; Central African Republic; Guinea Bissau; Ivory Coast; Mali; Niger; Rwanda; Senegal; Tanzania; Uganda; and Upper Volta [now Burkina Faso] (some countries had more than one person). Plus France, United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia. (Representatives from Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, and Zaire [now DR Congo] were not able to attend.)

This diversity also meant that the number and range of languages considered in Niamey was greater than in Bamako. On the other hand, like Bamako, the Niamey meeting focused only on the Latin-based transcriptions used in educational contexts (notably literacy) by the recently independent governments in sub-Saharan Africa.

This conference was particularly notable for its connection with the African Reference Alphabet, which was intended to provide a common character for each sound encountered in main African languages (rather than each country devising its own symbols or character combinations).

African Reference Alphabet. Source: Proceedings of the Meeting, UNESCO, 1981.

This alphabet was later amended by linguists David Dalby, who participated in the Niamey meeting, and Michael Mann, to include a number of additional characters. They also suggested a lower-case only alphabet,with a keyboard design using both registers to accommodate all the letters. (This keyboard was never adopted as such.)

 This effort was significant in influencing orthographies adopted for many languages (although not all). However it did not seem to be explicitly connected with the contemporaneously emerging digital text standards. Although many of the characters in ISO 6438 "African coded character set for bibliographic information interchange" were the same, there were differences that indicate the latter was the result of a separate process (or perhaps "fork" in today's software development terminology).

A few years ago I had hoped it would be possible to use the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Niamey expert meeting to organize a conference to review the status and influence of the African Reference Alphabet and its descendants - with particular attention to technical support in ICT - and issues related to non-Latin scripts used for African languages. And perhaps to broach other topics related to use of African languages in the spirit of the efforts of a half-century ago.

Perhaps such a conference will prove useful in the future, but for the moment I'll mark this 40th anniversary with a series of short posts on the 1978 Niamey expert meeting itself and/or contemporary efforts that in one way or another reflect its aspirations.

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* Several other expert meetings during this period addressed more specific sets of issues.

International Mother Language Day 2018

This year's International Mother Language Day (IMLD), observed as always on February 21, is focusing on multilingualism and linguistic diversity, with mention of their importance for sustainable development and peace.

I would like to share the UNESCO director's message for IMLD, which makes some important points about why mother languages, linguistic diversity, and multilingualism are worth our attention in schooling, technology, and public life in general. With the mention of multilingualism, these points seem very relevant to the situations in African countries.

First, it important to remember that while UNESCO plays a central role in the annual observance of IMLD, having brought it to an international event from one originating in Bangladesh, IMLD is most importantly an occasion for local, national and regional communities around the world to celebrate the "unity in diversity" of human languages, beginning with those we first learn in families and communities. I hope it will be possible soon to compile some examples of IMLD events across Africa - or pass on the references if someone else takes that task on. 

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Message from Ms Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of International Mother Language Day, 21 February 2018

Today, UNESCO marks the nineteenth International Mother Language Day. This is an opportunity to recall our Organization’s commitment to defending and promoting languages. 

A language is far more than a means of communication; it is the very condition of our humanity. Our values, our beliefs and our identity are embedded within it. It is through language that we transmit our experiences, our traditions and our knowledge. The diversity of languages reflects the incontestable wealth of our imaginations and ways of life. 

In order to preserve and vitalize this essential component of the intangible heritage of humanity, UNESCO has been actively engaged for many years in the defence of linguistic diversity and the promotion of multilingual education. 

This commitment concerns mother languages in particular, which shape millions of developing young minds, and are the indispensable vector for inclusion in the human community, first at the local level, then at the global level.

UNESCO thus supports language policies, particularly in multilingual countries, which promote mother languages and indigenous languages. It recommends the use of these languages from the first years of schooling, because children learn best in their mother language. It also encourages their use in public spaces and especially on the Internet, where multilingualism should become the rule. Everyone, regardless of their first language, should be able to access resources in cyberspace and build online communities of exchange and dialogue. Today, this is one of the major challenges of sustainable  development, at  the  heart of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.

Every two weeks, one of the world’s languages disappears, and with it goes part of our human history and cultural heritage. Promoting multilingualism also helps to stop this programmed extinction. 

In the wonderful words of Nelson Mandela, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart”. On the occasion of this international day, UNESCO invites its Member States to celebrate, through a variety of educational and cultural initiatives, the linguistic diversity and multilingualism that make up the living wealth of our world.

The Bamako 1966 meeting, 50 years later

From February 28 through March 5, 1966, a group of noted linguists and African language and literacy specialists from Africa and the North gathered in Bamako, Mali for a UNESCO-sponsored "expert meeting" on "unification of alphabets of national languages."^1,2

In a posting two years ago - "See you in Bamako in 2016?" - I discussed some reasons why it would be useful to revisit issues of harmonizing orthographies of African languages on the 50th anniversary of the meeting. Here I will focus mainly on the 1966 event itself. 

Background

This event was apparently the outcome of two processes, one being a proposal made to UNESCO's Executive Board by Amadou-Hampaté Bâ, Mali's representative to that body, to consider the issue of African language transcription, and the other a set of recommendations on the same topic by the 5th West African Language Conference held in Accra in April 1965.³ It also followed UNESCO-sponsored conferences on literacy held in Abidjan and in Ibadan, both in 1964.

The participants in the Bamako meeting included representatives from institutions in Cameroon, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Upper Volta (now of course Burkina Faso), as well as individual experts invited from other countries. Their names (from Annex I of the English and French versions of the report, which also have their affiliations and countries) are:⁴ David W. Arnott; Amadou-Hampaté Bâ; Oumar Ba; Étienne Balenghein; Mrs. Belovolova; Charles Bird; Geneviève Calame-Griaule; Mrs. J. Calvet; Ousmane Cissé; Bakary Coulibaly; M.A. Coulibaly; Alhaji Abba Jiddum Gana; Claude Gouffe; Ahmed M. Aq Harnany; Carl Hoffman; Maurice Houis; Anthony Kirk-Greene; Pierre F. Lacroix; Faconey Ly; Eldridge Mohamadou;Vincent Monteil; Demba N'Daw; Condotto Nenekhaly-Camara; Frederick W. Parsons; Karl G. Prasse; André Prost; Jean Rouch; Serge Sauvageot; Ibrahim Alpha Sow; Viktoria Petrovna Tokarskaja; Mahamane Touré; Kamory Traoré; Anton Vorbichler; Malam N.S. Wali; Daniel W. Zimmerman. The meeting was chaired by the Malian minister of education, Abdoulaye Singaré.

Work

The meeting in Bamako actually focused on six West African languages - Fula, Hausa, Kanuri, Manding, Songhay-Zarma, and Tamasheq - and on the Latin-based transcriptions for them. According to the report, the choice of languages was based on two criteria: (1) the language must be "officially recognized for adult literacy work in more than one Member State"; and (2) linguistic study of the language must be "sufficiently advanced to enable the work to proceed rapidly." There were a few subsequent expert meetings focusing on other groups of languages in the region, and most significantly, a meeting in Niamey in 1978 with more of a continent-wide mission of harmonizing African language transcriptions.

The Latin transcription of African languages actually has a long history, much of it traced back to missionary work in the late 19th century, but one of the dynamics has always been the tendency on one hand to develop special orthographies, even sometimes within the same language, for the phonetic systems encountered, and on the other hand to try to develop a unified system, even to the extent of covering many languages. This meeting is obviously in the latter category, building on earlier efforts, such as the IAI alphabet (1928, 1930).

One of the ways in which the Bamako meeting was significant was in facilitating discussion and agreement among several countries, including both Francophone and Anglophone states. In particular the orthographic conventions adopted in Nigeria for Hausa and Fula (including the so-called "hooked letters," in particular, ɓ, ɗ, and ƙ).

Some of the conventions discussed in the meeting, such as the hooked letters above for Hausa and Fula, and the letter ŋ ("eng") for for several languages have endured through the development of the African Reference Alphabet in Niamey. Several digraphs retained for Manding languages - dy, kh, nw, ty - and use of diacritics (accents) for open vowels were later dropped in favor of single letters and extended characters. (The "dy" has lived on, however, in the spelling of "Dyula.")

So the importance of the Bamako expert meeting was not necessarily in the specifics, but in advancing the process of developing standard orthographies for major African languages used in multiple countries.

The road not taken: Ajami and Tifinagh

Prior to European penetration and colonization of Africa, a number of languages of West Africa including most if not all the six discussed in Bamako, were written with an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet called Ajami. (The Arabic alphabet was also used on the East African coast and islands.)  There was apparently no interest on the part of colonial or post-independence authorities to develop these systems.

Among the reasons one might discern for such (non-)policy probably was the fact that resources were much more readily available for use of the Latin alphabet. One has only to look at Guinea's departure from the Bamako consensus to establish a Latin-based orthography using only the letters and diacritics one could type with typewriters of that epoch - no hooked letters or eng - to see an example of how central such practical limitations can be. (Guinea later harmonized its system with the rest of the region.)

Little surprise then that for Tamasheq, the ancient but locally used Tifinagh script was not entertained for literacy and other work.

Next steps?

In the years since the last major meeting focusing on harmonizing transcriptions - the expert meeting in Niamey mentioned above - we have of course seen revolutions in computing, how text in various scripts can be managed, and increasingly in human language technology. The standards fostered by meetings such as those in Bamako and Niamey have been helpful in the facilitating the informatisation of African languages.

However on country levels, orthographic rules for the same languages still vary. And now there are a number of new alphabets that, in the case of N'Ko for example, are popular among significant populations. And use of the older systems of Ajami and Tifinagh are facilitated with information technology.

So, in light of these complex realities and changing needs, the possibility of a new meeting that I brought up two years ago with regard to the 50th anniversary of the Bamako expert meeting still seems valid. Would a conference on African language transcriptions and technology be useful, as a way of taking stock and taking account of new developments? And would the 40th anniversary of the Niamey meeting in 2018 be a good time for it?

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1. The report of the meeting is available in original French (as image PDF and as HTML on the Bisharat site) and in English (image PDF).
2. Note in the title the use of "national language," a term that has been discussed previously on this blog. See in particular: "Ethnologue and 'national languages' in Africa" (5 Dec. 2013); "Ethnologue: 'National' and 'Principal' languages in Africa" (14 Oct. 2014); "'Community' & 'national' languages in African contexts" (11 Nov. 2015).
3. That same Congress in Accra, part of a series organized by the Survey of West African Languages, also founded the West African Linguistic Society. 
4. I thought it interesting to link the names where possible to bios or other webpages with information about these individuals. In some cases, however, this was not possible.

"Community" & "national" languages in African contexts

Working on preparing the PanAfrican Localisation (PanAfriL10n) wiki for relaunch, I recently returned to one particular reference - a 1985 UNESCO document and its use of two terms which have meanings in Africa that differ somewhat from mainstream (Western) definitions: "community language" and "national language."

The document in question is: UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Africa, 1985, African community languages and their use in literacy and education: A regional survey. A wikified version of its Appendix 1 presenting 159 African community languages is included in the wiki. The publication covers quite a bit more than that and despite its age it is well worth the attention of anyone interested in language planning in Africa.

Community language

It was the UNESCO document's definition of "community language" - for which there is also a page on the wiki - that had me opening it up again for the first time in years, and then looking up other definitions for comparison. First of all, the term as used by UNESCO evidently came out of a Subregional Seminar on National Languages and Teacher Training held in Dar es Salaam in 1979, itself also funded at least in part by UNESCO. Community language is defined as:

the dominant and general means of communication in a district or province or similar large area ... which serve[s] the purposes of general communication over fairly wide areas within countries....

In this sense, a community language is a widely spoken first language and may also serve as a local lingua franca - quite common in many African societies. Contrast that with the definition from Dictionary.com:

a language spoken by members of a minority group or community within a majority language context

This usage apparently emerged in the mid-1970s in Australia,¹ as an alternative way to describe languages other than English and Aboriginal languages, in the place of problematic terms such as immigrant language or minority language. It is also used now in Britain for non-English, non-Celtic languages,² and apparently is used in similar ways in other countries in the West.

No problem with either of these takes (although inevitably there are critiques of any term used to describe any population or its attributes), but it is important I think to note the different frames of reference involved, and value of understanding these in their own contexts.

As far as I am aware, "community language" has not been used much over the last 3 decades in discussing the sociolingistics of multilingual Africa (apart from a brief discussion in a recent book by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas³; I'd be grateful for any other examples). So it might be time to bring it back into discussion.

A subcategory of community languages in the survey is "shared community languages" - what are now more commonly called "cross-border languages" (a term used internationally⁴). Once you look at languages across borders, the type of use in each country becomes a factor in characterizing overall usage. The graphic at the right is an example of what that looks like in the case of Hausa.

National language

The UNESCO document also offers a very clear definition for "national language," a term with multiple uses and that always seems to have a hazy meaning. In general, "national language" tends to be used differently in Africa than in the West, to mean "language of the nation" (of which there may be more than one, but are not the Europhone official languages), rather than "nationwide language." I've discussed this previously in critiques of Ethnolgue's use of the term, in 2013 and 2014, but without reference to the definition from Dar es Salaam, 1979:

a national language is defined strictly as either (a) an African language that is also an official language, or (b) a language that has been decreed to be a national language of a country. It must be noted that according to this definition:
- all mother tongues are not necessarily national languages
- French, English, Portuguese, and Spanish are not national languages, even though they may be official languages

In many African countries, one or a number of African languages are given the legal status of "national language" and in a few, all languages spoken indigenously on their territory are included in this category. In short, "national language" in Africa most often can be plural. Contrast with this definition, also from Dictionary.com:

the language spoken and written by the majority of people in a country; also, the official language of a country, recognized and adopted by its government

There are two issues with the latter definition - first, it is incomplete, and second the conflation of "national" and "official." The latter confusion may be common ("official language" being another term with more than one definition and context of application), however in Africa there is most often an explicit distinction with regard to languages between statuses of "official" and "national" that the Dar es Salaam definition reflects.

African frame of reference for discussing languages

The differences in how these two terms are used in Africa on the one hand and in the West on the other merit a brief reflection. "Community" in one case seems to be more a matter of joining, where in the other, it is more a matter of setting or being set apart. "National" in one case is more plural, while in the other it is more exclusive. That is not to make a value judgement, but to the extent these impressions are valid, it is a difference with deeper origins and implications.

Also, where there is a difference, the definition used in Africa is less well-known. This issue was already familiar from discussions about meanings of "national language," so I found it of note that there seems to be a similar dynamic in the case of "community language."

Community & national languages as part of a system

Part of what is interesting about the effort begun in Dar es Salaam in 1979 and continued with the UNESCO study in 1985 was that defining terms like community language and national language was not just an exercise in categorizing languages and distinguishing among their use, but more an effort to conceptualize a system of language use in multilingual Africa. This system involved a "five-tier categorization of African languages in relation to development as follows:

• Mother tongue languages
• Community languages
• National language or languages (i.e., decreed as such)
• Languages of African intercommunication
• International languages"

This system, as I read it, is one of overlapping layers across which members of a multilingual society move, each with greater or lesser ease depending on education and linguistic portfolio. Outlining it in such a way calls attention to different levels of languages for purposes of planning and development.

At the same time, one could argue that what I have been calling the Western definitions of community and national languages also can be seen as part of a system. But that is a different system, wherein the national language is dominant, and each community language persists among a demographic minority in specific limited areas.

(See also: More on "community languages" in Africa)

The PanAfriL10n Wiki

Back on the topic of the PanAfriL10n wiki - I have taken longer than planned to get it to the point where it can be announced formally. The goal is presentability, and to that end some glitches in the transfer had to be corrected, and some features added. In terms of content, some pages needed to be eliminated or rewritten. Full updating will require input from others (another level of challenge), but some updates and additions are more important to the overall product, so they are being done now.

The longer term future of this wiki will depend on a number of factors, but if I'm investing time in it now, it is because there seems to be demand and there is not another resource that does what it attempts to do. More on all that when its return is formally announced.

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Notes:
1.  Michael Clyne. 1991. Community Languages: The Australian Experience. Cambridge University Press.
2. Colin Baker and Sylvia Prys Jones, eds. 1998. Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Multilingual Matters. (p. 99)
3. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. 2013. Linguistic Genocide in Education - or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? Routledge.
4. The French language Wikipedia has a lengthy article on this subject - Langue transfrontalière - but at time of access it had very little on Africa.

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]

________
* 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.

See you in Bamako in 2016?

Forty-eight years ago today, in Bamako, Mali, began a UNESCO-supported expert meeting on the "Unification of Alphabets of National Languages."* Running from 28 February until 5 March, 1966, this meeting was a key part of efforts to harmonize or standardize writing systems for several West African languages, which fall under the category that we now refer to as "cross-border" languages. Would the 50th anniversary of this event be an ideal time to revisit its impact, and ongoing challenges and opportunities for written African languages in general?

The Bamako 1966 meeting followed several smaller meetings and built on efforts that began during the colonial period. It in turn was followed by others, notably one in Niamey in 1978 that attempted to take the harmonization up a level with a proposed standard reference alphabet for all of Africa. One of the issues with writing African languages that had limited or no written tradition has been how to accommodate sounds that were not readily represented by imported alphabets. Another was how to develop standards for languages that crossed Africa's new borders - which in many instances were also borders between areas where different Europhone languages, and their respective phonetic systems, were dominant. These meetings dealt with both, drawing on national experiences and expert opinions.

The result of these meetings was a remarkably coherent set of standards that has guided many African countries on developing orthographies for their national languages (as the term tends to be used there).

In later years, conferences and expert meetings on planning for African languages dealt more with policy, and applications such as literacy and localization. Yet there are still issues with African languages in print and writing, some larger, some dealing with details, and some that could not have been anticipated by the notables and experts of half a century ago. Some of those are certainly being addressed by the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN)'s Vehicular Cross-Border Language Commissions and National Language Structures.

Ultimately it would be for ACALAN and/or other African language organizations to decide on the utility of a general meeting in the near future, but what might a conference on the 50th anniversary of the seminal Bamako 1966 expert meeting have on its agenda? As indicated above, one issue might be a kind of stock-taking of how the work of the early expert meetings has served a range of efforts in African languages, from education and literacy, to literature, and via Unicode, to social media and mobile devices.

And about Unicode, how is it supporting written African languages? One issue which seems to have receded as the technology has improved, is how well dynamic composition works for complex Latin (where characters have accent/tone mark combinations not included as single characters in the Unicode standard - some languages such as Yoruba and Igbo have this). There may be other details such as that of the capital "eng" letter.)

A larger issue is how the focus on "unification" of African alphabets on the one hand and country-level practice on the other relate. "Harmonization" seems to be a fortuitous concept, but is it, and how should it work going forward, when dynamic local usage may seem to go the other way? (See for example the earlier post on "Texting in Wolof & implicatons for standard orthographies.")

Since the early conferences (and indeed language policy in many states) focused on the Latin-based alphabet, a new conference might also consider other scripts, such as Ethiopic/Ge'ez, Arabic (often referred to as Ajami when used to write African languages), and N'Ko. The focus could be more technical, including issues such as harmonization (especially for Ajami) and transliteration, to support more policy options for countries where diverse scripts are used.

We're still two years out from the 50th anniversary, but it is not too early to discuss the utility of using that occasion to bring together a new generation of experts working on support for written African languages.

* The French language version is available on the Bisharat website.

What did the International Year of Languages mean for Africa?

With the formal conclusion of the International Year of Languages (IYL) on International Mother Language Day, I'd like to take a moment to ask: What did the IYL mean for Africa?

With any such observances, any analysis right afterward will of course not be able to take account of long-term or latent effects (e.g., people or organizations whose awareness was raised and whose later action is somehow affected). Nevertheless it's worth at least looking at what has been done.

A glance at the calendar of events in and outside of Africa shows a diversity of observance (this list is far from comprehensive, so pointers to other events and more information are invited):

• 5-7 March - Southern Africa Regional Conference on "National Policies: The role of cross-border languages and the place of lesser used languages" (sponsored by ACALAN and held in Johannesburg, South-Africa). See Minister Z. P. Jordan's keynote address c
• 22-24 April - East Africa Regional Conference on "National Policies: The role of cross-border languages and the place of lesser used languages" (sponsored by ACALAN and held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.) No link found.
• 28 May - Conférence-débat « Les langues africaines, facteur d'intégration » (tenu à l'UNESCO, Paris dans le cadre de la Journée (semaine) de l'Afrique, qui avait comme thème « Langues africaines et l’enfant africain »)
• 18 October - Launch of the International Year of Languages in Botswana (per article in Mmegi)
• 23 October - Golden jubilee of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. This famous Nigerian author now intends to translate this work into his first language, Igbo.
• 28 Oct. - 4 Nov. - "Somalia: The Word and the Way to a Better World" (Somali Literature Festival with a "Somali Language and Literature Day" and touring book display, in London). Alternate link.

In addition there has been mention of the IYL in various press articles in different countries. A few have been linked on the AfricanLanguages list (try searching "International Year"). Special mention should be made of a blog posting and video entitled "Orphan's Lullaby" by South African author Alex Smith to mark the close of the IYL (note the various translations in text).

The IYL also marked the beginning of the African Network for Localisation (ANLoc), a 3-year project which succeeded the PanAfrican Localisation project. These are part of a program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada to support development of ICT in African languages.

African locales

Speaking of ANLoc, one of its subprojects that is working on compiling locales for African languages. A press release timed just before IMLD and the end of IYL appeals for help in this effort:

Thu, 19/02/2009 - 11:00
PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pan-African researchers unlock computers for African languages on Mother Language Day

In celebration of International Mother Language Day, a Pan African Network of computer and language experts is ensuring that computers are unlocked for mother tongue speakers.

ANLoc, The African Network for Localisation (pronounced Unlock), is a Pan-African network undertaking a number of projects to help eliminate technological barriers that prevent computers from being used by mother tongue speakers.

International Mother Language Day is hosted on 21 February each year by UNESCO and aims at raising awareness of mother tongue usage.

To celebrate International Mother Tongue Day the ANLoc locales sub-project is undertaking a special community driven push to enable African language technology. The locales sub-project is focused on creating 100 new African locales. A locale is a set of data that guides a computer to adapt to the local language and country. Locales contain information that instructs a computer on how to write essential basic information, such as the days of the week and month names in a given language, and how to write the monetary values for a given country. Once locale data is in place, Africans often enjoy a first class computer experience for the very first time. Locales impact how well a computer's spell checker works, finding and indexing of African language documents and searching using tools like Google.

The ANLoc Network is encouraging African language speakers in African and the diaspora to celebrate International Mother Language Day by helping to develop a locale for their language. Those wanting to contribute can visit http://o2.it46.se/afrigen to find out more about the importance and need for locales and how to contribute one for their language.

Information about the ANLoc Network and the various projects being undertaken to eliminate technological barriers for African language in the digital age can be found here at http://africanLocalisation.net.

2008, International Year of Languages: Languages Matter!

This year has been declared the International Year of Languages by the United Nations. Official observance is being coordinated by UNESCO.

One of the things we can hope for is that the time and focus on languages can in Africa be used to forward the efforts begun in the Year of African Languages (2006).

Personally I've been collecting some links and ideas about the Year and how to support it on a section of my personal site.

So, what about the last year?

Busy. Some work highlights:

• Vastly expanded the Pan African Localisation wiki (and that's still in progress). The idea with this is to develop a comprehensive information resource for people of a range of backgrounds approaching localization in African languages. First of all, localizers - people working on or planning a project for some aspect of localization in one or more African langauges. Also policymakers (ICT, language, and increasingly localization), development program planners, local activists, etc. It involves bringing a lot of information together (in many cases just basic with outlinks) and interlinking it. Localization to a certain degree involves bringing together of "previously unrelated skills, or matrices, of thought" (per the well known formulation of Arthur Koestler in another context some years ago) so this wiki is combining information on African languages and sociolinguistics, along with language technology tools, ICT4D information, mention of policies etc. In fact, all these "skils or matrices of thought" can also be understood as interacting parts of a larger "localization ecology," which is a concept I'm working on.


• Presented at and participated in "Regional Consultation on Local Language Computing Policy in Developing Asia" and "PAN Localization Project Phase II Meeting"meetings of the PAN Localisation Project, held in Thimphu, Bhutan in January. The PAN L10n project is funded by IDRC and has been particularly successful in facilitating localization work in several countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The discussion of "local language computing policy" involved representatives from several other countries in the region.


• Attended a one-day seminar on "Recent Experiences on Measuring Languages in Cyberspace" at UNESCO in Paris. This was on 22 February, the second day of a two day observance of "International Mother Language Day."


• Helped organize and participated in the "Pan African Research on L10N Workshop & Localization Blitz" held in Marrakech, Morocco in February 2007. This is another piece in IDRC's strategy to develop a network for localization in Africa. The workshop was organized by the Tactical Technology Collective - same organization that put together Africa Source I (Okahandja, Namibia, 2004) & II (Kalangala, Uganda, 2006) and the Localisation Dev workshop (Warsaw, Poland, 2004). Many of the participants also had been at the PanAfrican Localisation Workshop in Casablanca, Morocco (2005); three others and I came from the seminar in Paris mentioned above.


• Attended the 38th ACAL 2007 & 11th ALTA 2007 Conference held at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, US, in March 2007. This was an opportunity to connect with various people involved in research on and teaching of African languages. It has been my thought for a while that linguists and language instructors can be involved more with localization efforts.


• Submitted extensive comments on the Africa section of the "International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development" in May. More about this in a later post.


• Taught a distance course on "Language and Development Communication for the Payson School of Tulane University. This was an interesting challenge and opportunity to learn as well as teach. I hope I have the opportunity to give this course again.


• Continued to interact online with various people working on aspects of localization and internationalization. This is not really news though - have been doing this in one form or another for several years.

Today is International Mother Language Day, an observance established by the UN in 1999. Apparently there will be some ceremonies chez UNESCO on Monday 2/23. More info at www.unesco.org/education/IMLD2004. En français à www.unesco.org/education/IMLD2004/fr/.

In the panorama of holidays, anniversaries, and observances it may seem quite minor, but it is one of the only events calling attention to 1) language loss and 2) the too often overlooked (esp. in Africa) importance of first languages in education.

A couple of brief articles give more info: UNESCO urges teaching from earliest age in indigenous mother languages and UN's Mother Language Day Focuses On Conserving World's Linguistic Heritage.

There is no observance that I'm aware of in Niamey. A colleague I mentioned this to a while back asked, but there was nothing. And no time to generate something. Unfortunately the advance support from UNESCO for this seems to be minimal - they pull things together nicely in time (webpage, ceremonies), but for advance planning there is little. I did get a nice letter in response to inquiries offering to send materials, but it was too close to the event to allow for mail to arrive.

Problème avec l'affichage du français ici! Sur un autre ordinateur que j'utilise d'habitude pour regarder ce blog j'ai remarqué que les caractères accentés sont transformés en autres choses... Cela arrive je crois parceque ce page est en UTF-8, et selon la configuration du browser, les entités indiqués par caractères accentés veut transmettre d'autres informations que celles qu'on a esperé. A faami?? Franchement, je ne sais même pas si moi je comprends complètement. Une solution est de mettre, par exemple, & e a c u t e ; (sans les espace intercalés) pour e accent aigu dans le texte (html) du "post" etc. - mais c'est gênant. Donc je chercherai une autre solution...

Enfin, a couple of things written to someone re an interesting survey of cybercafés in Nairobi. It seemed to me that the question re language was missing. In fact language of content and access seems to be given little energy by people promoting ICT. Here are excerpts from my two letters; I omit the nice brief reply (basically saying no) to the first letter that I received this morning:

(Thursday, November 20, 2003 6:51 AM)

Greetings! I saw the item on your Nairobi cybercafé survey in Balancing Act's News Update #183 and found it very interesting. Indeed, this is a topic deserving more research and I hope your effort encourages same.

In looking at the News Update piece and the summary at http://www.ccoak.net/cyber_survey.html I did not notice mention of any questions in what I think is an area of central interest, that of language. Maybe this subject was discussed in the full report, but I had trouble downloading it.

Some questions I would look for would include the languages people use in e-mail and websurfing (not sure how many sites in Kenya have Swahili, for instance, though there are a number in Tanzania of course) and whether users have any preferences in this regard that are not currently met with regard to content language (i.e., would they like to see more content in Kenyan languages). The latter question would seem to fit with the overall theme of the report that users sought more local content: does the language of the local content matter, to whom, in what ways, and to what extent?

This all would bridge to another set of questions re computer interfaces: although Swahili for example uses the ASCII character set, I understand that Gikuyu has some diacritic characters (see http://www.bisharat.net/A12N/KENYA-table.htm ) and that this may pose an inconvenience to people who might want to use this in, say, e-mail (see for example http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/message/73 ). Have cybercafés dealt with this question or even thought about it?

Thanks in advance for any feedback and all the best!

(Saturday, February 21, 2004 10:51 AM)

. . . Re language I think it's always important and the interest is definitely real. Three things tend to submerge the issue in various agendas/discourses (including those relating to ICT):

1) In my mainly West African experience, there are things close to the heart that people don't make a big thing of overtly.
2) Many Africans have more or less bought into the line that their languages are "tribal dialects" or in any event unsuited for science, technology, and learning. This has been reinforced by the formal education systems which at best assign a secondary role to indigenous languages and in too many cases (esp. in former French colonies)
3) Many Westerners tend to assume away African languages, even though their intent be benign, since they generally don't understand them, and the Africans they interact with the most tend to be able to get by in English or French.

ICT adds another dimension to this. The association of English (or French) with technology, opportunity, and the exciting world elsewhere is understandable, but there could and arguably should be the opportunity for some balance. Nobody is suggesting that Africans have to use their languages on computers and the internet, but the current approaches in many ways tell them that they can't - or shouldn't be so foolish as to think of it.

The latter may seem gratuitous, but I've been dumbfounded by some things I've heard occasionally mainly from Westerners working in development here - why would someone want to use something other than French if they can understand that? ; we're a decade and a half away from any localization for African languages ; the plurality of African languages (and the inability to initiate use in all of them) makes it better to stay with English or French...

Coming back to your cybercafé survey, language is worth the question(s). Especially in the case of Swahili, which of course is an important regional language that is even being considered as a medium for instruction in higher education. But even in the case of Kenya for other maternal languages - there has been some significant publication in Gikuyu, for instance, so why not use it on the internet, or why shouldn't speakers of that tongue be interested in seeing some web content in it? The main thing is that behind the apparent "lack of excitement" on the topic there may be, and likely is, a range of opinion and interest. It would be interesting to know what this is currently and also to follow its evolution, if you are planning to continue the study.

. . .

Last item for this entry - I had joked about agricultural linguistics with a couple of our trainees not long ago. It's not as far out a juxtaposition as it might seem: I just ran across the term environmental linguistics looking for something else yesterday. That has a couple of senses it seems - depending on whether it's the built environment or the natural one - a distinction that means more perhaps to us with ag. & NRM backgrounds than to linguists. The latter sense seems along the lines of the operating premises of the NGO Terralingua. I still think that there's a fertile area for research and practice on language and development in Africa, and linguistics needs to be brought into the mix more vigorously.