Some interesting updates, October 2025
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.
The first four articles have been published of issue 2, volume 1 of Language Planning in Africa. One article is by Funmilayo Olubode-Sawe, on developing ‘green’ terminology in Yorúbà. Then Nana Agyeman and Gladys Ansah examine language-in-education policies in Ghana. Patrick Belibi discusses ‘postcolonial Englishes’. Mamadou Sanogo examines the possibilities for choosing indigenous languages as official languages in Burkina Faso. We hope to be able to publish a few more articles as part of this issue in the coming period before the end of the year. We welcome new submissions on an ongoing basis.
New members
This time, we welcome no fewer than seven new members: Prof Dr Jennifer Culbertson, University of Edinburgh, UK; Dr Damien Hall, Newcastle University, UK; Dr Mahamadou Konta, Université Yambo Ouologuem, Mali; Dr Joshua Mwaipape, the University of Dodoma, Tanzania; Prof Dr Dion Nkomo, Rhodes University, South Africa; Dr Serge Sagna, University of Manchester, UK; and Dr Menzi Thango, Wits University, South Africa.
Podcast series
New Circle member Serge Sagna is the host of an interesting podcast / video series, called ‘Multilingual World’ – may also be a great teaching resource for some of you. It features interviews with people like the famous Prof Ayo Bamgbose and Circle member Paul Kerswill, among others.
CfP opens
There will be a combined Conference of the German and Swiss African Studies associations in August next year in Basel, Switzerland. The Circle will be present there with a panel on African Languages in a Globalized and Digitalized world. The Call for Papers has just opened, with a deadline of the 11th of January.
If you have information of this type or other information you would like to share, just drop me a line!
Best regards,
Bert (also on behalf of Comfort, Taiwo and Sarita).