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Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: D27b-04. To panel D27b.

Title of paper:

Author:

F. Emilie G. Sanonouattara (University Joseph KI ZERBO).

Short abstract paper:
The language issue justifies most of Africans' problems. Education quality and outcome are better when the learners' culture and language are taken into account. Unity among African countries, independence of thought and autonomous ways of funding research are possible solutions.

Long abstract paper:
Africa has long been considered as a continent of troubles: Starvation, illnesses, wars, poverty, illiteracy, poor health, inadequate education systems, etc. The African 'curse' has long been investigated all over the world with specific agendas. Most African researchers in their turn have mostly reproduced the conclusions reached before for several reasons including financial ones.

This paper aims at analyzing one of the major causes explaining why Africa is still lagging behind in most fields: failure to take into account cultural background including language in the learning process and the education systems. Language is included into culture and vice versa. The transmission of knowledge from one generation to the other should be rooted into culture. Dissociating language from cultural background is creating an artificial leadership and a superficial development. The linguistic situation of most African countries has been characterized as a diglossic one, which implies that there is a linguistic distribution of languages according to their function in society. This situation is mostly due to the fact that the new topics brought about by colonisation have often been assimilated to the coloniser's language and culture. Thus, European languages seem to be fit for schooling, scientific disciplines and somehow religious issues, while local languages seem fit for sociocultural matters and to a certain extent certain religious ones. So, school subjects in general have been assimilated to the language which brought them. Knowledge, aptitude and even intelligence have often been and are still associated to the mastery of the coloniser's language. Relying on the existing literature on post colonialism and on data from the case of Burkina Faso in the fields of education, health and justice, this paper will be descriptive and analytical. The methodology both describes and analyses statistical facts. It then tries to suggest solutions on how to reconsider a number of concepts.

Keywords: Education, Language, Postcolonialism, Development, Africa.

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