Sociology Seminar Series ______

Language and Society in Contemporary Africa

by Prof Kwesi Kwaa Prah

Monday 18 July 2016, 13.00-14.30 Sociology Seminar Room, Leslie Social Sciences Building (Upper Campus), Room 4.51

Abstract. After a half-century of post-colonialism, African language policies have not substantially changed from the policies which were inherited from the colonial era. This situation persists despite claims by successive African governments that they want, intend and are implementing change. African policy-makers are stuck in a groove of inertia. The result is that we keep asking ourselves the same questions and get the same answers. The research we do shows the answers clearly to be universal answers which most societies in the world outside Africa know; we are however unable to take further steps towards bringing our policy and practice in line with what has emerged as universal knowledge and collective wisdom in language policy for education and development. Where do African language policies stand today, and how are they represented? After independence most African governments elevated some or all the indigenous languages to the status of “national languages”. This was an acknowledgement, in theory, of the sociological significance of these languages. Practice tells a different story.

Kwesi Kwaa Prah is founder and Director of the Africa-wide Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) based in Cape Town, South Africa. He studied at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam. He has worked extensively across Africa, Europe and Asia researching and teaching Sociology and Anthropology in various universities including the University of Heidelberg, Germany; the Amsterdam Municipal University, in the Netherlands; the Institute for West Asian and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in China; Makerere University, Uganda; University of Botswana and Swaziland; University of Juba, Sudan; Cape Coast University, Ghana; National University of Lesotho; University of Namibia; University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Kwesi Kwaa Prah has also been a Visiting Nuffield Foundation Fellow and Associate at the Centre for African Studies and Darwin College, Cambridge University. Kwesi Prah is currently mainly involved with work in Anthropological Linguistics, specifically the harmonization of African orthographic conventions. He has published numerous books; these include: The Social Background of Coups d’etat (1973), Beyond the Color Line (1998), African Languages for the Mass Education of Africans (1995), Capitein. A Critical Study of an 18th Century African (1992), The Bantustan Brain Gain (1989), Mother Tongue for Scientific and Technological Development in Africa (1993), The African Nation: The State of the Nation (2006), Anthropological Prisms (2009), Soundings (2010), Tracings: Pan Africanism and the Challenges of Global African Unity (2014), Sudan Matters. Reports on Traditional Leadership and Administration in Africa – Two Cases from Sudan and South Sudan (2016) and Discourses of the Developing World (2016). Some of these books have been translated into French, Chinese, Shona and Arabic.