Multilingual Education in Africa-Southern Agency, Expertise, and Resilience
Date
2025
Authors
Heugh, K.
Editors
Chapelle, C.A.
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Book chapter
Citation
Source details - Title: The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, 2025 / Chapelle, C.A. (ed./s), pp.1-10
Statement of Responsibility
Conference Name
Abstract
This entry traces six phases of multilingual education in Africa. The first three phases predating European colonisation include hieroglyphics, the liturgical use of Ge'ez in East Africa, and the spread of Islam and Ajami script across North and West Africa. The following three phases (colonial, postcolonial and decolonial) are compressed in 140 years of overt attempts to erase epistemologies and multilingualisms of African communities and scholars. Attempts to subsume more than 2,100 languages under monolingual systems that use only four languages (Arabic, English, French or Portuguese) have failed. Instead, horizontal multilingual practices continue to be used for daily informal communicative functions, and vertical multilingualism is used for formal (economic, educational, faith-based) purposes in multiple languages. It is through multilingual practices that individuals and communities exercise agency, voice, and participatory citizenship; and engage in knowledge exchange and translation (transknowledging). Valuable research and scholarship in African and southern multilingualisms and innovative transknowledging are found in rural and remote communities where communities assert their agency and voice, unfettered by restrictive monolingual regimes. Valuable research also emerges from system-wide implementation of multilingual education in Ethiopia and South Africa, and the contributions of agile NGOs with multistakeholder implementation at village, local and regional levels.
School/Discipline
Dissertation Note
Provenance
Description
Access Status
Rights
Copyright 2025 JohnWiley & Sons