The education policies of 1988-2003 and 2004-2015 in The Gambia make provisions for the use of the L1 or area languages to serve as the media of instruction from Grades 1 to 3 and as school subjects from Grade 4 onwards. However, the policy on the use of L1 for teaching has not been implemented and what is practised instead is the use of English…

This paper reports on a study that examined the extent to which the development of academic literacy in isiZulu, an indigenous language spoken across all the nine provinces in South Africa, enhances opportunities for epistemological access. The focus is in relation to a pilot study of a Bachelor of Education Honours module that uses isiZulu as the…

This paper investigates the perceptions of teachers from one Sabaot dominated primary school in western Kenya regarding the medium of instruction (MoI) policy in different class levels. While their "ideal" MoI policy bears some resemblance to the official policy which advocates mother tongue (MT) as medium in lower primary and English in…

After the demise of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, 11 languages (English, Afrikaans and 9 indigenous African languages) were given official status. In the higher education landscape, English remains the dominant language of scholarship. At the University of KwaZulu-Natal, English is the main medium of instruction but the institution's…

From the time of Belgian colonial rule, French was predominantly the medium of instruction (MOI) in Rwanda. Then, in October 2008, a Rwandan Cabinet resolution called for the immediate implementation of English as the language of instruction in all public schools at all levels--from primary to tertiary. This study reports on ethnographic interview…

Language policy is generally seen as a national-level decision regarding which languages the state will support, and in which public domains. However, the reality is that language policy plays out at regional and local levels as well. In fact, it could be argued that the most important instantiations of language policy are those which directly…

Several African countries instituted education reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, there is only little evidence on the effectiveness of these programs. Additionally, most previous studies of the determinants of literacy and numeracy have considered the proficiency in only one language and, possibly, numeracy. This paper examines both of these…

This study examines the use of English loanwords in L1 isiXhosa-L2 English bilinguals living in Cape Town, South Africa. The specific aim of the study is to investigate which individual background factors may increase or reduce the presence of English loanwords in a L1 isiXhosa speaker's repertoire. Data on English loanword use and individual…

The academic and public debates about language maintenance and language shift in the post-1994 South Africa distract attention from the more productive and important endeavour of explaining the nature of the multilingualism observed among users of African languages in urban contexts. An explanation for this phenomenon is offered here, based on…

Tanzania's post-independence language policy has promoted Swahili as a means of achieving national and linguistic unity. This policy has affected the Ngoni language in south-western Tanzania. Today, Swahili has permeated communication all over Tanzania, even in rural and remote areas. This paper discusses lexical borrowing and especially…

Indigenous cultural and language negotiations ongoing in the contexts of South Africa and Canada are documented in two studies, one sharing narratives from Black parents in South Africa and the other sharing narratives of Métis Elders in Canada. Black parents' perspectives on Indigenous language and cultures and the role of education in…

This article examines the use of the national language, Setswana, as the language of instruction in linguistically and ethnically complex primary schools in Botswana, and the dilemmas it presents. The current language-in-education policy in Botswana requires the use of Setswana as a language of instruction at standard 1 in public schools. The…

Primary school enrollments have increased rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa, spurring concerns about low levels of learning. We analyze field experiments in Kenya and Uganda that assessed whether the Reading to Learn intervention, implemented by the Aga Khan Foundation in both countries, improved early-grade literacy as measured by common assessments.…

In situations of extreme linguistic diversity, language promotion can be a very challenging undertaking. Decades of educational colonisation and foreign language dominance have produced inferiority complexes so that local or indigenous languages (Cameroonian mother tongues), because of their unofficial status, are perceived as liabilities rather…

Because of their global clinical utility, phonemic fluency tests are frequently incorporated into neuropsychological assessment batteries. However, in heterogeneous societies their use is complicated by the lack of careful attention to using letters of equivalent difficulty across languages, and the paucity of norms stratified by relevant…