Africa is the only continent where the majority of children start school using a foreign
language. Across Africa the idea persists that the international languages of wider
communication (Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish) are the only means
5
Introduction
for upward economic mobility. There are objective, historical, political, psycho-social
and strategic reasons to explain this state of affairs in African countries, including
their colonial past and the modern-day challenge of globalisation. There are a lot of
confusions that are proving hard to dispel, especially when these are used as a smokescreen
to hide political motives of domination and hegemony.
New research findings are increasingly pointing to the negative consequences of
these policies: low-quality education and the marginalisation of the continent,
resulting in the »creeping amnesia of collective memory« (Prah, 2003). Achievements
and lessons learned from both small steps and large-scale studies carried out
across the continent and elsewhere have yielded ample evidence to question current
practices and suggest the need to adopt new approaches in language use in education.
Africa’s marginalisation is reinforced by its almost complete exclusion from
knowledge creation and production worldwide. It consumes, sometimes uncritically,
information and knowledge produced elsewhere through languages unknown to the
majority of its population. The weakness of the African publishing sector is just one
example. Ninety-five per cent of all books published in Africa are textbooks and not
fiction and poetry fostering the imagination and creative potentials of readers. Africa
has the smallest share in scholarly publishing, which is mirrored by the international
Social Science Citation Index which, despite its cultural bias, covers the world’s leading
scholarly science and technical journals in more than 100 academic disciplines. Only
one per cent of the citations in the Index are from Africa. The publicly-accessible
knowledge production of African scholars takes place outside Africa. The UNESCO
Science Report of 2005 indicated that Africa is contributing only to 0.4 per cent of
the international gross expenditure on research and development, and of this, South
Africa covers 90 per cent.
"One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed." Rev Canon Karanja.