Introduction : The Contemporary African Paradox
The launch of the African Union’s Decade of Education represents the latest in a long series of ambitious, well-funded, and ostensibly transformative initiatives aimed at addressing the continent’s persistent educational crisis. Yet, despite decades of frameworks, declarations, and action plans, “learning poverty”, defined as the inability of children to read and comprehend a simple text by the age of ten, remains widespread across Africa. The persistence of this challenge is not primarily the result of inadequate investment or insufficient political will. Rather, it reflects a deep-seated structural and conceptual flaw that has consistently undermined reform efforts: the systematic marginalisation of African languages as legitimate mediums of instruction, knowledge production, and intellectual development.
The recent African Union communiqué on the Decade of Education encapsulates this paradox. Although rhetorically rich and aligned with global development discourse, employing terms such as transformation, indigenous knowledge, and teacher professionalism, it remains conceptually weak and strategically incoherent. The absence of a concrete, adequately funded, and institutionalised role for African languages exposes a profound disjuncture between the proclaimed aspirations of educational transformation and the linguistic realities of African societies. Unless African languages are recognised, resourced, and mainstreamed as central instruments of learning, creativity, and cognitive development, the Decade of Education risks reproducing the very epistemic and pedagogical inequalities it claims to address.
1. No Nation Has Ever Developed in a Foreign Tongue
History demonstrates with consistency that no nation or people has ever achieved enduring, self-sustaining development by relying exclusively on the languages and cultures of others. Language is not a neutral instrument; it is the repository of a people’s worldview, epistemology, and modes of reasoning. It encodes collective experience, environmental adaptation, and the conceptual categories through which societies make sense of reality. To abandon one’s language in education and knowledge production is therefore to surrender intellectual agency, and to outsource meaning, creativity, and identity to external frameworks of thought.
The trajectory of global development reveals that linguistic sovereignty is a precondition for genuine modernisation and innovation. Europe’s intellectual transformation during the Renaissance and Enlightenment was not conducted in Latin, the transnational language of medieval scholarship, but in vernaculars : Italian, French, English, German, and Spanish. When Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy in Italian rather than Latin, he democratised access to knowledge and elevated his vernacular to a medium of philosophy and science. Similarly, the scientific revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries flourished once scholars began to write and teach in their native tongues, linking abstract inquiry to lived experience (Ngũgĩ 1986).
In East Asia, Japan’s Meiji Restoration exemplifies the transformative power of linguistic ownership. Japan’s rapid industrial and technological modernisation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was accomplished through an education system firmly grounded in the Japanese language and cultural traditions. While the nation borrowed scientific and technological knowledge from the West, it naturalised these imports within its linguistic and cultural frameworks, ensuring that modernity was appropriated on its own terms. As Kwesi Kwaa Prah (2009) observes, Japan’s success stemmed from its ability to “domesticate modernity” rather than to “imitate the West.” This process was mediated through language, which acted as a filter for knowledge adaptation and indigenisation.
Similarly, China’s contemporary global ascendancy is underpinned by a deliberate linguistic policy that prioritises Mandarin as the medium of instruction, administration, and innovation. Even as China integrates into global networks, it produces scientific research, technological development, and digital innovation primarily in Chinese, translating outward only what it chooses to share. This linguistic self-reliance allows China to control the epistemic terms of its modernisation and to safeguard cultural continuity while participating in global knowledge economies (Heugh 2011).
In contrast, the African continent continues to operate under a system of linguistic dependency, where the languages of colonial powers mediate access to education, governance, and scientific discourse. This dependency perpetuates epistemic subordination and undermines cognitive efficiency. Studies consistently demonstrate that learning in a second or foreign language creates a cognitive barrier that impedes conceptual understanding and critical thinking (Brock-Utne 2010). As a result, Africa’s education systems often produce individuals who are literate in colonial languages but disconnected from their own socio-cultural realities, i.e., functionally educated yet epistemically alienated.
The consequences of this linguistic alienation are profound. A society that thinks, teaches, and innovates in a foreign language internalises external categories of value, progress, and reason. It becomes intellectually dependent, perpetually translating rather than originating ideas. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986) warns that such “cognitive colonisation” traps entire generations in a borrowed consciousness, unable to generate development paradigms that resonate with local realities. The result is mimicry of progress rather than authentic transformation, a pattern evident in many postcolonial states where policy blueprints, curricula, and institutional designs mirror those of former colonial metropoles.
The link between linguistic sovereignty and national development is therefore neither symbolic nor sentimental; it is structural and cognitive. Every society that has achieved sustained development has done so by building educational, scientific, and technological systems upon its own linguistic foundations. Language is not merely a vehicle for communication; it is a cognitive infrastructure that shapes how problems are identified, analysed, and solved. When education occurs in a foreign language, learners must first negotiate linguistic meaning before engaging with conceptual content, fragmenting cognition and stifling creativity. By contrast, instruction in one’s mother tongue fosters deeper comprehension, analytical precision, and the capacity to innovate from within one’s own epistemic framework (Heugh 2011).
2. Linguistic Neglect as a Symptom of Deeper Structural Problems
The silence on language in the African Union communiqué is symptomatic of a deeper and more entrenched crisis in educational planning, one that manifests in three interrelated structural pathologies: epistemic, pedagogical, and professional. Together, these pathologies expose a persistent disconnect between policy rhetoric and practical reality. While official frameworks are replete with progressive terminology, such as transformation, innovation, and inclusivity, they often lack the epistemological depth and institutional coherence necessary to translate these ideals into practice. Consequently, African education systems remain trapped in a cycle where ambitious declarations are made without addressing the foundational linguistic and cognitive conditions required for meaningful transformation.
2.1. The Epistemic Contradiction
The initiative, “Transforming Knowledge for Africa’s Future”, aspires to reposition the continent as a producer rather than a consumer of knowledge. However, this aspiration is fundamentally undermined by its linguistic architecture. Knowledge cannot emerge in a linguistic vacuum; it is conceptualised, articulated, and transmitted through language, which serves as both the vessel and the validator of thought. By anchoring the entire educational enterprise in former colonial languages : English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, the system structurally confines African intellectual production within the epistemic frameworks of its colonial past.
This linguistic dependency reinforces the “cognitive colonisation” of Africa, a condition in which learning becomes an act of translation rather than creation (Ngũgĩ 16). Consequently, African education systems privilege assimilation over innovation, ensuring that the continent remains positioned at the periphery of global knowledge economies. As long as African languages remain excluded from formal domains of learning and scholarship, the aspiration to “transform knowledge” will remain rhetorical, reproducing the same hierarchies it purports to dismantle.
2.2. The Pedagogical Paradox
The communiqué’s emphasis on standardised assessment tools and foundational learning further reveals a deep pedagogical inconsistency. Foundational learning presupposes comprehension, cognitive engagement, and conceptual mastery, all of which depend on linguistic accessibility. Research in cognitive psychology and education confirms that children learn best in their mother tongue, where comprehension is intuitive and cognitive load is minimised (Brock-Utne 2010). Conversely, instruction in a foreign language imposes a dual cognitive burden: learners must first decode an unfamiliar linguistic system before accessing the underlying concept in mathematics, science, or literacy.
This pedagogical misalignment produces what the African Union itself describes as “learning poverty,” a systemic condition where students fail to attain basic literacy and numeracy despite years of schooling. The tragedy is not that African children are incapable of learning, but that the system is designed to make comprehension improbable. By measuring proficiency through foreign linguistic lenses, African education systems institutionalise failure, mistaking linguistic exclusion for intellectual deficiency.
2.3. The Professional Disempowerment of Teachers
The pillar of teacher professionalism, prominently highlighted in the AU communiqué, is rendered hollow by the same linguistic dysfunction. True professionalism presupposes mastery, creativity, and autonomy, qualities that are severely compromised when teachers are compelled to instruct in a language they neither command fluently nor culturally inhabit. A teacher alienated from the medium of instruction cannot exercise independent pedagogical judgment or adapt content to the cognitive realities of their students. Instead, many become script-dependent transmitters, constrained by rote methods and externally imposed curricula.
This dynamic constitutes a form of intellectual alienation, disempowering teachers and diminishing classroom engagement. As Brock-Utne (2010) argues, educators teaching in foreign languages are often reduced to mere functionaries within systems that prioritise conformity over creativity. The consequences are profound: weakened classroom interaction, low morale, and declining learning outcomes. In effect, linguistic exclusion disempowers not only learners but also educators, transforming what should be a profession of creativity into one of compliance.
3. Why the Linguistic Flaw Persists
The persistence of this linguistic paradox is not accidental; it is deeply structurally entrenched and sustained by a convergence of political, economic, and ideological forces. Three interlocking dynamics : the political economy of elites, the tyranny of global benchmarks, and the perceived cost of linguistic complexity, collectively reinforce the dominance of ex-colonial languages in African education systems.
3.1. The Political Economy of Elites
The continued use of former colonial languages in governance and education primarily serves the interests of national elites who inherited and adapted colonial administrative systems to preserve socio-political dominance. Proficiency in these languages functions as a gatekeeping mechanism, defining access to education, employment, and political participation. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: elites educated in foreign languages reproduce a linguistic hierarchy that privileges them while excluding the majority (Bamgbose 2011).
Such linguistic stratification perpetuates what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986) calls the “captive mind” syndrome, in which the African elite governs through borrowed epistemologies. Mother-tongue education is often dismissed as parochial or divisive precisely because its success would democratise access to knowledge and erode the symbolic power of linguistic exclusivity that sustains elite dominance.
3.2. The Tyranny of Global Benchmarks
Global and continental frameworks such as Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) and Agenda 2063, Aspiration 1, Goal 2, while progressive in their stated intentions, inadvertently reinforce linguistic dependency within African education systems. International education metrics are predominantly designed around standardised assessments conducted in English, French, or Portuguese, privileging comparability over comprehension (Alexander 2005). This creates what Müller (2018) calls the “tyranny of metrics,” in which educational success is evaluated through performance on global tests rather than through evidence of meaningful learning at the national or continental level. Consequently, national education systems often prioritise linguistic conformity and alignment with external standards to attract donor funding and international validation, thereby perpetuating a cycle of dependency that undermines locally grounded educational transformation.
3.3. The Cost of Complexity
Finally, resistance to Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) is frequently justified by the perceived logistical and financial complexity of implementing multilingual systems. While it is true that developing curricula and training teachers across diverse linguistic contexts presents challenges, these difficulties are often overstated to rationalise policy inertia. In practice, maintaining foreign-language systems is far more costly in the long term, as evidenced by persistently high rates of repetition, dropout, and learning failure (Heugh 2011). The argument that multilingual education is prohibitively expensive overlooks the far greater economic, cognitive, and social costs of linguistic exclusion, costs that undermine both educational efficiency and sustainable national development.
4. Towards True Transformation: Building a New Educational Architecture
A genuinely transformative Decade of Education must move beyond the rhetorical inclusion of language and instead reimagine and reconstruct Africa’s educational architecture around principles of linguistic and epistemic sovereignty. This transformation demands more than token references to “indigenous knowledge” or “cultural relevance”; it requires embedding African languages at the core of curriculum design, teacher education, assessment, and research. Language must be understood not merely as a tool of instruction but as the very foundation of knowledge production, cultural continuity, and cognitive development. It is through language that societies define reality, transmit values, and innovate within their own epistemological frameworks. Without linguistic sovereignty, any effort at educational reform risks remaining externally driven and conceptually shallow, producing systems that continue to educate Africans about the world in foreign languages, rather than empowering them to think and create from within their own intellectual and cultural traditions.
4.1. Pillar 1: Foundational Literacy in the Mother Tongue.
Foundational education must be firmly rooted in the learner’s first language, as this is the natural medium through which cognition, comprehension, and creativity develop. Evidence from countries such as Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Tanzania demonstrates that children who begin their education in their mother tongue acquire literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills more effectively and with greater confidence (Heugh 2011). When learners are taught in a language they understand, they engage more actively, retain knowledge longer, and develop stronger problem-solving abilities.
For the first eight years of schooling, the mother tongue should therefore serve as the principal medium of instruction, supported by a gradual and well-structured transition to bilingual or multilingual proficiency. Such an approach not only enhances academic performance but also nurtures cultural identity, self-esteem, and social cohesion. By grounding foundational education in the languages children speak and think in, African education systems can lay the groundwork for lifelong learning, innovation, and inclusive national development.
4.2. Pillar 2: Curriculum as Cultural Translation.
A decolonised curriculum must go beyond mere translation of existing content into African languages; it should actively reframe knowledge through African epistemologies, positioning the mother tongue as both the medium and the analytical lens of learning. This approach involves the systematic integration of indigenous knowledge systems, ranging from environmental management practices, traditional medicine, and agricultural techniques to locally grounded mathematical reasoning, into formal educational structures (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018). By embedding these culturally and contextually rooted forms of knowledge, education becomes a process of cognitive and cultural empowerment, enabling learners to critically engage with global ideas while retaining intellectual sovereignty. Such a curriculum not only validates African ways of knowing but also fosters innovation by connecting abstract concepts to lived experiences and local realities.
4.3. Pillar 3: Re-Professionalising Teachers.
Teacher education must prioritise linguistic versatility and cultural competence as core professional competencies. Educators should be trained not only to teach effectively in multiple languages but also to create, adapt, and contextualise pedagogical content in African languages, ensuring that instruction resonates with students’ cultural and cognitive realities (Brock-Utne 2010). This approach empowers teachers to move beyond rote transmission of externally designed curricula, positioning them as active agents of intellectual innovation and knowledge production within their communities. By equipping educators with the skills to integrate local epistemologies, cultural practices, and linguistic nuances into their teaching, the education system fosters a classroom environment where learners engage critically, think creatively, and develop solutions grounded in their own social and cultural contexts.
4.4. Pillar 4: Decolonising Assessment and Digital Learning.
Assessment frameworks and educational technologies must be fundamentally reimagined to operate in African languages, ensuring genuine cognitive equity and inclusion. When learners are assessed in the languages they understand best, evaluations reflect true comprehension and critical ability rather than linguistic proficiency. Developing testing tools, literacy benchmarks, and evaluation metrics in African languages would therefore align assessment with authentic learning outcomes rather than with colonial linguistic standards. Similarly, digital learning platforms should be deliberately designed to promote multilingual access, participation, and content creation. Embedding African languages within the digital knowledge economy not only broadens access but also ensures that technology becomes a vehicle for linguistic preservation and innovation rather than assimilation. This involves investing in digital localisation, open-source language tools, and online repositories of African knowledge. By making African languages integral to both assessment and digital education, the continent can democratise knowledge production and participation in the global digital sphere, transforming technology from a site of dependency into a platform for epistemic liberation and cultural continuity.
5. Conclusion: Between Liberation and Indoctrination
The African Union stands at a decisive historical juncture. Its educational vision, however ambitious, will remain hollow unless it confronts the foundational epistemic contradiction embedded within Africa’s education systems. The challenge is not one of inadequate resources but of structural design, a system inherited from the colonial enterprise, built not to cultivate autonomous thinkers but to sustain dependency. This architecture produced a narrow elite fluent in colonial languages and a populace alienated from its own linguistic and cultural heritage.
To devalue a child’s language is to devalue the child’s humanity, stripping education of its liberatory potential. True transformation in African education will not emerge from another round of polished declarations or imported policy frameworks, but from a radical reimagining of what it means to know, teach, and learn in African contexts. Until African children are free to think, dream, and create in the languages that carry their histories, emotions, and imaginations, all “bold commitments” to reform will remain rhetorical.
The Decade of Education must therefore mark the beginning of an epistemic revolution, one that recognises language as the foundation of knowledge, not merely a tool for communication. A borrowed language cannot carry the full weight of indigenous thought, nor can it serve as a sustainable vessel for decolonised knowledge production. As Bamgbose (2011) rightly observes, linguistic dependency ensures that Africa remains a consumer of ideas rather than their producer, perpetually confined within paradigms that privilege imitation over invention.
The historical record is unequivocal: no civilisation has ever achieved sustainable progress by negating its own language. Europe’s intellectual and scientific revolutions began when scholars turned from Latin to their vernaculars. Similarly, Asia’s rise, exemplified by Japan and China, was rooted in linguistic sovereignty and cultural self-definition. Africa’s renaissance will likewise depend on reclaiming its linguistic autonomy, not as a symbolic act of cultural pride but as a structural prerequisite for epistemic freedom, cognitive empowerment, and sustainable development.
Only when Africa educates its children in the languages that embody its collective memory and imagination will the continent move from indoctrination to liberation, transforming education from an instrument of dependency into a vehicle for genuine intellectual and human emancipation.
Bibliograpy
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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Heinemann, 1986.
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UNESCO. If You Don’t Understand, How Can You Learn? Global Education Monitoring Report, Policy Paper 24. UNESCO, 2016.
About the author
Dr. Lang Fafa Dampha is a scholar and cultural advocate with a Doctorate in English Studies (Civilisation, Society, and Culture) from the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne. He has an extensive academic background, having taught Legal English (Law and Politics - UK/USA) at the University of Paris 2, Panthéon Assas, Introduction to Banking and Finance, the Stock Market, and the History of Economic Thought at the University of Paris 8, Saint-Denis, and English for Economic and Social Administration at the University of Paris 13, Villetaneuse.
From August 2015 to May 2025, Dr. Dampha served as Executive Secretary of the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN), a specialised institution of the African Union based in Bamako, Mali, dedicated to promoting the use and development of African languages. He also held the position of Interim Director of the African Centre for the Study and Research on Migration from March 2021 to October 2022, another AU specialised agency focused on migration governance and research.
He is currently serving as Executive Director of the Pan-African Centre for Cultures and Languages, (PACCL) an initiative committed to advancing African cultures and languages as instruments for social transformation and sustainable development across Africa and its diaspora.
