Literacy in Senegal; languages unmentioned

I first got interested in African languages after my experience working in the field in Togo, where so much happened around me in languages that I never mastered beyond greetings and a few phrases. Later in Mali and Guinea, I made special efforts to learn their languages for working and living on community levels. This experience and subsequent research and observation have convinced me of the importance of African languages in development work (even for foreigners and outside-funded projects), and attuned me to how language is and is not mentioned in various discussions and descriptions of development work in Africa.

Source: EDC, "Youth Volunteers Can Contribute to Significant Reading
Gains: Evidence from the HYVALL project in Senegal," March 2015

So it was with interest that I looked at some articles on the "Harnessing Youth Volunteers as Literacy Leaders" (HYVALL) project in Senegal, which is funded by USAID under its All Children Reading Grand Challenge program, and implemented by YMCA Senegal with the US non-governmental organization, Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC). I found it striking that one, and another, and then another article about this literacy effort made no mention at all of the language or languages used.

Only when listening to a YouTube video by two members of  YMCA Senegal could one learn that the students were discussing French lessons in "mother tongues" (French being the medium of instruction). But those languages for some reason were not named (presumably Wolof, the most spoken language in Senegal, is one of them).

This is an interesting approach, making more formal outside of school and via peer tutoring the informal practice sometimes seen in African classrooms of the teacher explaining aspects of a lesson formally given in the Europhone language of instruction in the students' first language. However it also raises the question whether HYVALL makes any effort to expand students' literacy skills in their first language, and towards achieving "pluriliteracy" - or "multilingual literacy" in all their spoken languages.

I've discussed pluriliteracy in African Languages in a Digital Age (pp. 40-41), as well as in a blog posting last year. Puriliteracy may not be the explicit goal of education or literacy efforts in Africa, although mother-tongue based/multilingual education may imply that outcome to a degree, and literacy in different languages or scripts is rarely if ever discussed in statistics. However it would seem to merit prioritization by programs such as All Children Reading.

As much as mention of languages, and African languages in particular, might be omitted from communication about foreign-funded literacy projects, African languages seem often to be absent from the design and content of the projects themselves.

Two ebola info sites - almost no African language content

Several recent posts on this blog have highlighted various efforts to provide information about ebola in diverse African languages. Here I'd like to mention two important efforts to share material for communication on ebola, which include almost no information (yet) in African languages: the Ebola Communication Network (ECN), funded by USAID and run by the Center for Communications Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and "Ebola and C4D," a page on UNICEF's Communication for Development (C4D) website.

The purpose here is not to criticize but to help show the current language gap in messaging.

The ECN site has, according to the dropdown for "languages" on the search page, materials in the following languages (with number of items): English (133); French (17); Portuguese (2); Spanish (2); Krio (1); Pidgin (1); and Symbolic (1). Not counted in the total are the CDC's radio spots 11 African languages accessible via a link. To be fair, the ECN was only launched last week, and this is a significant collection as far as it goes.

The ECN site allows subscribed users to upload material, which would allow materials in more languages to be made available. Two questions for ECN are:

1. How will review be handled for a wider range of languages?
2. Will there be any proactive effort to develop the collection of materials in African languages in affected areas that might otherwise be overlooked?

The "Ebola and C4D" page, apparently launched in August, also has a significant collection. From perusal of the lists (organized under tabs for Fact Sheets, Social Mobilization, Planning Documents, and Other Tools & Resources), it appears that all linked materials are in English, French, or Portuguese, with one item in Khmer and one poster from Uganda in "Bantu" (which is a language family - may be Runyoro or Luganda - seeking to identify).

Here too, a means to submit materials is provided, so the above 2 questions may also be asked of UNICEF.

An effort should be made to upload existing material in African languages (with correct identification), as a necessary first step in helping to expand these collections.

Passing of Denis Bilodeau

I just learned that Denis Bilodeau, a long-time senior project officer and division chief of USAID, passed away earlier this month in Bamako. He had a long career in West Africa was well known in the region for his work on information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) projects.

Although I only met him during my last trip to Bamako in May 2008, I had communicated with him on a couple of occasions prior to that. I first heard about him and his work from a colleague in ICRISAT in Mali (where I worked briefly in 1999 and 2000), who spoke highly of his work and described him as "plus malien que les maliens."

The occasion of meeting him was the chance for Dwayne Bailey (head of the ANLoc project) and me to talk about aspects of localization and how that could advance work in ICT4D. Sadly we never had the chance to collaborate on any of that, but hopefully there will be opportunities to build on the foundations that Denis helped build.