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Conversations on Language Policy in Africa:
2025 webinar series

In 2025/2026, we will organize a new series of webinars, in collaboration with the University of Bern (Switzerland).

The seminars will last one hour and take place in principle on Fridays at 4 PM CET.

Save the dates:

- 3 October 2025: Caroline Story (Nigeria) - register here.

- 7 November: Menzi Thango (South Africa);

- 9 January 2026: Yassine Boussagui, Yamina El Kirat El Allame (Morocco);

- 6 February: Elvis ResCue, David Dankwa-Apawu, Yvonne Agbetsoamedo (Ghana);

- 6 March: Keneth Oboriah (Nigeria);

- 10 April: Salikoko Mufwene (Mondes francophones).

Abstracts (2025)

The issue of language of communication in the workplace plays a pivotal role, particularly in multilingual settings. The issue of language of communication in the multilingual bank settings of the Free State Province is a central one in this presentation. The main argument of the presentation is that English continues to be the main language of communication and business, especially pertaining to the written communication in banks, while African languages such as Sesotho, Setswana, isiZulu and isiXhosa are excluded. The argument is supported by qualitative findings suggesting that most banks use English in meetings and legal documents such as loan contracts, while most banking customers are speakers of African languages such as Sesotho, Setswana, isiZulu and isiXhosa, particularly in the townships and rural areas where the majority of black people reside.

 

Menzi Thango is a writer and author of isiZulu books. He holds a PhD in African Language Studies (Sociolinguistics) from the University of the Western Cape, a master’s degree in African languages (Unisa), master’s degree in creative writing (UP), BA Honours in African languages (Unisa) and B Ed. degree (Wits). His field of specialisation is in Sociolinguistics, Language Planning and Policy and Creative Writing. He is passionate about the development of African languages and Creative Writing; thus, his goal is to see African languages as well-developed languages in domains such as education, technology and banks. He is currently a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Wits School of Education, lecturing literacy and second language acquisition courses.

Webinars 2023

Promoting African languages in formal domains: moving from theory to practice

This series of webinars was organized in collaboration with the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). All webinars were recorded - find the recordings here.

Theorists such as Prah and others have for a long time argued that a change to using African languages is going to be necessary, in order to make the best use of Africa's talents and to speed up a process of culturally appropriate and sustainable development on the continent. For too long, though, policymakers, educationalists and the media have ignored this argument, banking instead on the near-exclusive use of former colonial languages as medium of instruction and in the public domain. This is now changing, little by little. In many countries, local languages are increasingly being used, both in traditional and social media. In domains such as education, we see early signs of a changing trend. In this series of webinars, we intend to explore these topics by looking at how an increased use of African languages in formal domains is not only necessary but also how it is practically thinkable in concrete country situations. We want to investigate the change, which we think will become inevitable over the coming decades.

The webinar series has provided a mix of more theoretical and more practical talks by experts in the field and has examined both the situation in the continent in general and in specific countries. For more information, see also the abstracts section below.

Webinar 1: Monday, 27 February 2023 - Prof Dr Salikoko Mufwene
Topic: Language Policy: Some Economic and (Socio-)Linguistic Considerations.

Recording.

Webinar 2: Monday, 27 March 2023 - Dr Bert van Pinxteren
Topic: African Languages as Medium of Instruction in higher education: what has happened after Prah?

Recording.

Webinar 3: Monday, 24 April 2023 - Prof Dr Yamina El Kirat El Allame

Topic: French, Standard Arabic and Amazigh: experiences and challenges in Morocco.

Recording.

Webinar 4: Monday, 29 May 2023 - Dr Rethabile Possa-Mogoera
Topic: Developing Sesotho as medium of instruction at tertiary level - challenges and opportunities

Recording.

Webinar 5: Monday, 31 July 2023 - Prof Dr Andy Chebanne
Topic: The Proposed Languages in Education Policy for Botswana: Will it Make Local Languages a Social Development Resource?

Partial recording and slide set.

Webinar 6: Monday, 28 August 2023 - Prof Dr Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju
Topic: African Languages as Medium of Instruction - the case of Nigeria

Recording.

Webinar 7: Monday, 25 September 2023 - Dr Comfort Ojongnkpot

Topic: Opportunities for language revitalisation through digitization: the example of Ejagham

Recording.

Webinar 8: Monday, 30 October 2023 - Dr Sarita Monjane-Henriksen

Topic: Language hierarchies: Individual and group perceptions of Subaltern languages in Mozambique

Recording.

Webinar 9: Monday, 27 November 2023 - Dr Seraphin Kamdem

Topic: Cameroon: 273 local languages, French, English, German, Spanish, CamPidgin, and many others all together; Forging new multilingual language policies

Recording and slide set.

Abstracts (2023)

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