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.

c. Add economic values to and reward excellence in African languages:

One of the main challenges facing the development, promotion and use of African languages, which is closely linked to the attitudes I discussed above, is that these languages do not lead to jobs that attract good remuneration. There is therefore a tacit belief that they do not have any economic value. With a view to changing this belief, adding economic value to and rewarding excellence in African languages, ACALAN, in collaboration with ECOWAS, organised a prize of excellence in African languages in 2010. Many submissions were received and from 1 to 5 September 2011, the international jury met in Bamako to deliberate on the winner of the prize. Two works, one in Fulfulde and another in Hausa, won the first and the second prizes worth US10,000 and US5,000 respectively. ACALAN will publish the winning works and translate them into other African languages. 30 | The view from ACALAN Furthermore, taking into account Article 62 c of the ECOWAS Treaty stating that ECOWAS member states should undertake to ‘promote the learning of African languages’, ACALAN is working with this regional organisation to adopt the vehicular cross-border languages of Fulfulde, Mandenkan and Hausa as working languages of ECOWAS together with English, French, and Portuguese. It was in that context that, during the sixth meeting of the ad hoc Committee in charge of monitoring ECOWAS’ culture programmes held in Cotonou, Benin from 16 to 19 April 2012, ACALAN suggested the adoption of a progressive approach by experimenting and continuing research involving the Fulfulde, Hausa and Mandenkan Vehicular Cross-Border Language Commissions in order to address aspects relating to terminology development, interpretation and translations. Thus, during the experimental phase, ECOWAS meetings in Guinea, Mali and Nigeria will, apart from English, French and Portuguese, experiment with Fulfulde, Mandenkan and Hausa respectively. ACALAN expects that these initiatives will not only create job opportunities for language practitioners, but will also change attitudes towards African languages.

d. ACALAN’s major projects: ACALAN has designed the following major projects