In February last year, the East African Community approved French as one of the bloc’s official languages – besides Swahili and English – underlining the growing recognition of French as a major medium of communication across the region. French has for long been an official language in Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi, while it is also recognised and is widely spoken in DR Congo, the newest EAC member. Globally, the French language is spoken by around 267 million people across some 88 countries, making it the seventh most spoken language. Now, Rwanda is a multilingual society with English, French and Swahili recognised as official languages – alongside native Kinyarwanda. The decision to increase official languages is rooted in post-Genocide government’s policy of actively investing in human capital and making the people of Rwanda competitive regionally and internationally. But it’s not enough to make a language official; you need to take steps to actively promote it. And that’s what is happening in Rwanda. The country is recruiting English and French language teachers concurrently with a view to train local teachers as well as improve language proficiency of students. On the one hand, Kigali is in the process of importing English teachers from Zimbabwe, while, on the other, some 45 French language teachers arrived in the country this week through an initiative backed by the Organisation Internationale de La Francophonie (OIF). The OIF teachers were dispatched to Rwanda following the success of a pilot project that involved 25 volunteer teachers – with the plan set to involve at least 100 teachers. There is also a parallel effort to bring in Swahili teachers from Tanzania, with President Paul Kagame seeking the support of his Tanzanian counterpart Samia Suluhu Hassan during her state visit to Kigali last August. All these efforts point to the government’s renewed commitment to promote language proficiency in society, thereby boosting citizens’ competitiveness and enhancing multilingualism and cultural diversity in Rwanda. In fact, Mandarin should be considered in a not too distant future as well. Therefore, it’s imperative that Rwandan children and youth – and all Rwandans in general – embrace this pragmatic approach to help raise truly multilingual generations.
