Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Language education policy in post-colonial Africa 197
development, and, while changes in the medium of instruction policy may resolve
some of these problems, there is, as argued earlier, little immediate prospect of radical
policy change. Also, while there is a large literature on policy, empirical studies of the
processes of L2 medium instruction in Africa, and of how those processes might be
made more efficient, are rather less abundant. There still remains, then, much work
for applied linguists to do.
NOTES
1. One exception is Zambia, where English functions as the official medium from grade 1 of
primary school.
2. Terms used in this chapter to refer to various different types of language or language variety
(e.g. ‘mother tongue’ or ‘indigenous language’) are problematic. ‘Mother tongue’, for example,
is unsatisfactory because in Africa many children grow up with bilingualism as their ‘mother
tongue’. And ‘mother tongue education’ may be a misnomer because, while the language used
at home and in early primary education may bear the same name, they may in fact be quite
different varieties. ‘Indigenous language’, too, is problematic when used to contrast with
‘former colonial language’, for many Africans do, in fact, speak English, or to an even greater
extent Portuguese (see Vilela 2002: 308), as their native, first language, albeit in an Africanised
form. That said, as a matter of convenience we shall persist with these terms because they are
widely used and seem unlikely in the present context, given this caveat, to provoke serious
misunderstanding.
3. There is a long tradition of experimentation with bilingual primary schooling, incorporating
local languages as media of instruction, in Francophone countries such as Burkino
Faso, Mali and Niger. But even after twenty years of experimentation there have been no
moves to extend the use of bilingual media to all mainstream primary schools in the state
sector (Alidou 2003: 110).
4. Chichewa and Nyanja are in fact very closely related languages.
5. Alidou (2003: 106–8) draws on UNESCO research data (UNESCO 2000 Status and
Trends 2000: Assessing Learning Achievement. Paris: UNESCO).
6. Having lived in Kaoma (formerly Mankoya), the centre of the Nkoya heartland, from 1977
to 1982, the author can confirm the reality of such tensions.
7. These very factors feature prominently in the explanation given by the then Malaysian
prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, of the government’s 1993 decision to reinstate
English as medium of higher education in science, engineering and medical courses after many
years of Bahasa Malaysia medium (see Gill 2004: 144).
8. The Malaysian corpus planning agency, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, has played a leading
role in elaborating a corpus of scientific and technical terms in Malay (see Chapter 2), greatly
facilitating the completion in 1983 of a switch from English to Malay medium instruction in
all subjects in public university education (Gill 2004: 142).
9. The heyday of ‘structural adjustment’ policies was the 1980s and early 1990s. Imposed by
the IMF-World Bank (in part as a remedy for the heavy burden of external debt servicing),
they prescribed, among other things, privatisation of state enterprises, liberalisation of capital
controls and the reduction of public expenditure, including expenditure on education.