Archive: past updates

Dear members of our informal Circle,

After a first successful webinar in our new series ’Conversations on Language Planning in Africa’, we are now preparing for the second in the series, which will take place on Friday, 7 November at 4 pm CET (that’s 5 pm in Johannesburg – check your time zone!)  Speaker will be Dr Menzo Thangi of the University of the Witwatersrand, who will talk about his article on Workplace Communication in banks in South Africa.

The series will take a break in December and continue in the new year, on 9 January, with Yassine Boussagui and Yamina El Kirat El Allame speaking on language policy in Morocco. After that, the conversations will take place on 6 February; 6 March; and 10 April.

Dear members of our informal Circle,

As announced, the first webinar in our new series will take place Friday, 3 October, at 4 pm CEST. The format will be a short talk, followed by the opportunity for dialogue – approximately one hour in total.

The webinar will be hosted by Initiative Afrique of the University of Bern (Switzerland) and will use MS Teams. Prior registration is required.

Moderator this time will be Dr Djouroukoro Diallo of the University of Bern. Our first speaker is Caroline Story of Texas State University. She will speak on Postcolonial Language Imperialism in Africa – The Latter-day Saints Missionary Program.

Dear members of our informal Circle,

After a positive and encouraging meeting of the Editorial Board of Language Planning in Africa, we are now ready to publish the first articles that will be part of issue 2, volume 1 of the Journal. We will announce them as soon as they appear. Publishing more articles will also mean that some of the larger indexing services will start to include the Journal. We welcome new submissions on an ongoing basis. We will be grateful if you look favourably on future requests to review submissions for the Journal! We are also more than open to book reviews of relevant recent literature.

As announced, we are organising a new series of webinars, entitled ‘Conversations on Language Policy in Africa’. The first one of these will be on Friday, 3 October 2025, starting at 4 pm CEST. The speaker is Caroline Story of the University…

Dear members of our informal Circle,

Most of you will have seen it – on 23 May, we went public with the inaugural issue of the Language Planning in Africa journal, featuring an editorial on the relevance of language policy in Africa, an opinion piece by Salikoko Mufwene and seven peer-reviewed articles. Since then, it has been accessed more than 800 times, which we think is a great score for a publication of this type. We are working to further improve the Journal and to get it indexed and we welcome new submissions on an ongoing basis. We would especially like to welcome book reviews of relevant recent literature.

We’re very happy that we managed to keep the Editorial Team together and working in good spirits during the full 18-month preparation process. Recently, however, Dr Lynn Kisembe of Moi University (Kenya) has had to step down from her editor role. She will…