The workshop was attended by scholars, language policy experts, linguists, writers, activists, as well as Minister Hamat N.K. Bah and Historian Hassoum Ceesay amongst other stakeholders.
Making his discourse, Sidia Jatta, linguistic and former National Assembly Member for Wuli West, lamented that Africa is the continent with the greatest number of languages, yet foreign languages all sway in the domain of official languages and scholarship.
He bemoaned further how some Africans can speak French and English fluently but are incapable of writing even a sentence in their mother tongue.
“You are literate in foreign language and an illiterate in your own language, and you pound your chest and say you are literate people, you are illiterates,” he said. He thus expressed that ACALAN’s aim is to render such people literate.
Professor Sammy Beban Chumbow, president of Assembly of Academicians of Accra, Ghana, thanked Mr. Lang Fafa Dampha, executive secretary of ACALAN-AU and The Gambia government for the initiative in working with them on the subject matter – need for countries having a language policy centred on use of the languages of the people for the development of the people.
He expressed delight coming together with other stakeholders for the symposium, adding the AU expects that every country in Africa has a language policy that envisions the use of native languages, African languages, for development in partnership with the official languages – English, French and Portuguese.
ACALAN, headquartered in Bamako, Mali, is the African Union (AU) specialised agency charged with the promotion and development of African languages as a means for fostering continental integration and development.
The organisation was established in Mali in December 2000 by presidential decree as the Mission for the African Academy of Languages (MACALAN). It was transformed into ACALAN in January 2006, becoming a specialised institution of the AU when its statutes were adopted by the Sixth Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union.
Amongst others, it has been entrusted with the task of overseeing the implementation of LPAA, developed in 1984 by the OAU Inter-African Bureau of Languages (OAU-IBL) and revised in 2006.
Moreover, one of the major objectives of the LPAA is to ensure the development of vigorous and well-articulated language policies for AU member states to ensure that Africa languages, by appropriate legal provision and practical promotion, assume their rightful role in the development of programmes of member states.
Thus, the workshop is anticipated to afford stakeholders the opportunity to identify existing challenges and be able to proffer practical solutions and best practices in ACALAN’s bid to help The Gambia, technically and financially, in its effort to develop a national language policy within the context of the LPAA.
