Kenyan Assistant minister for East African Community Affairs, Peter Munya

Kenyan Assistant minister for East African Community Affairs, Peter Munya, has stated that there was no need for EAC to add other colonial languages like French in the list of regional official languages recently proposed by Burundi.

His comment comes days after Burundi made the proposal to the EAC Council of Ministers, but the panel of ministers turned-down the request. “In my view, since the EAC already has English as an official language there is no need to add another colonial language in the list,” Munya told journalists in Nairobi when speaking alongside the EAC consultative meeting involving over 150 political parties from the five East African countries.

He said Tanzania had also sent an application seeking that Kiswahili be upgraded from its current status as lingua-franca of the EAC zone to an official language, a proposal he qualified as positive. “There is logic for Kiswahili to be an official EAC language because it is a local tongue and widely spoken across the five member states of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.”

According to Munya, French was a foreign language and should not be promoted under regional co-operation. “I am surprised because at least Burundi should have advocated for Kirundi to be included in EAC, not French.

“Our mandate should be to promote local languages, not those which are foreign in nature and certainly, not those with strings attached to the dark colonial era in the region,” he stressed, urging partner states to stick on promoting Kiswahili and also English because of its wide coverage in the region.

Beatrice Kiraso, the deputy secretary general (in charge of political federation), said that Burundi was not snubbed as has been made out to be. The Burundian EAC official said the issue was still being debated and the council of ministers’ meeting did not reach an effective decision on the matter.

Foreign Minister Bernard Membe was recently quoted affirming that four other countries had applied to join the EAC, noting that Article 137 of the Treaty of East African Cooperation states clearly that member states should have ability to converse in Kiswahili (the lingua franca) and English (the official language).

Those applying are the Republic of Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan and the Comoros, where the Comoros don’t speak English and their strand of Kiswahili is unfamiliar for Mainland East Africans.

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