Add economic values to and reward excellence in African languages:
The view from ACALAN | 29
collaboration with the Regional Economic Commissions, such as the Economic Community of West African States ECOWAS West Africa, SADC Southern Africa
and ECCAS Central Africa, organise a workshop to launch the vehicular cross- border language commission. During the workshops, each country concerned
with the vehicular cross-border language in question presents a report on the stage of development and use of the cross-border language, and the priority areas
which will be the focus of the commission’s work during its three years of tenure, are identified and included in the plan of activity of the commission.
ACALAN and its partners such as UNESCO and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie OIF mobilise funds to transform the priority areas into
implementable projects. So far, ACALAN has established the Beti-Fang and Lingala Vehicular Cross-Border Language Commission Central Africa, the
ChichewaCinyanja and Setswana Vehicular Cross-Border Language Commission Southern Africa and the Fulfulde, Hausa and Mandenkan Vehicular Cross-Border
Language Commission, and they are fully operational. One of the priority areas these commissions have identified is the harmonisation of the writing systems
of the language they deal with. This will not only allow the exchange of teaching materials in the vehicular cross-border languages, but also facilitate uniformity
for the training of the teachers for L1 teaching. Put differently, the harmonisation of the writing systems of the vehicular cross-border languages will maximise the
resources and minimise the costs of producing and using teaching materials for these languages.
Before I proceed to consider adding economic value to African languages and rewarding excellence in these languages, I would like to make two remarks here.
Firstly, the use of vehicular cross-border languages as an overall strategy to develop African languages is not new. As I have already stated, the OAU-BIL also
adopted the same strategy, though referring to these languages as ‘languages of wider communication or inter-African languages’ Mateen 1999: 172. Secondly,
because of the reasons I present here, the harmonisation of the writing systems of the vehicular cross-border languages has been one of the main preoccupations of
organisations such as the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society CASAS, UNESCO, and various scholars in Africa and beyond over the years Kashoki 1978;
Diagne 1978, Mesthrie 2006; Roy-Campbell 2006, and Banda 2009.