The EAC has for the first time last week conceded the possibility to make French another ‘official’ language of the East African Community, besides English and Kiswahili.

This development is attributed to the lobbying of Burundi, which unlike Rwanda has so far failed to embrace English as a major medium of communications, leaving Burundian business people ‘outside’ the main languages and making it difficult to do business with the rest of the EAC, where English and Kiswahili are commonly spoken. Rwanda has some time ago made English the main medium of teaching in schools and educational institutions and has successfully pushed French into a shrinking position, before also then officially joining the Anglophone Commonwealth of Nations last year.

The language move has already raised questions as to why French should be added as a business language across the entire regional English speaking block, and while teaching French as a foreign language was common already at least in secondary schools, this should not make it a ‘must’ for the EAC only to employ interpreters and translators for every word spoken or printed in the future of the East African Community, as one regular source in Arusha  at the EAC head office put it. He added ‘the treaty dictates English as main language and Kiswahili as second and any change would have to be discussed, agreed and ratified by member states first to become effective’.

It is expected that the matter will receive attention in discussions in the future when legislators and officials meet in Arusha but by general consensus at present considered unlikely to succeed in the near future.

By Prof. Dr. Wolfgang H. Thome

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