The African National Language Question and the African National Project

Abstract

The history of colonial and post-colonial Africa demonstrates that African national languages have traditionally been mobilised and manipulated instrumentally to achieve the desired goals of the political regimes of the time. National languages were invented, promoted and cultivated during the colonial period for purposes of administrative convenience. Such manipulation of African national languages as tools of managing fluid and diverse identities of the colonised peoples constituted 'command over language' aimed at developing 'languages of command'. Following their attainment of political independence from colonial rule, most post-colonial African nations instituted language policy regimes that further propagated and promoted national languages as a rallying point for building social coheSion, cross-cultural integration and a sense of national unity among the diverse polities and ethno-linguistic groups. This chapter seeks to tease out and problematise the underlying meanings of African national languages in the twenty-first century African identitarian and development discourses. It argues that while standardised African national languages might have served the political interests of the nation-state very well both in the colonial and post-colonial periods, their usefulness in twenty-first century Africa remains questionable unless they are re-imagined and re-constituted in ways that are not anachronistic to the dreams and visions of African continental integration.