The importance of language as a tool of communication can not be over emphasized. Language is used to convey information or knowledge which is an integral part any form of development.

About 2000 languages are believed to be spoken in Africa, research has shown that most African countries use colonial languages as their official and working languages. African languages on the other hand are somewhat neglected at work and in schools.

This is obviously detrimental to African`s development. The majority of Africans do not speak these former colonial languages, instead they speak their mother tongues (African Languages). A child naturally picks up the languages spoken in his or her immediate environment, we tend to pick up the language of our immediate environment as our first languages.

In Africa, making colonial languages official and working languages have limited our potential development. This has over the years restricted the access of a large number of Africans from vital information and knowledge (which most of the time are conveyed in colonial languages) thereby denying them participation in the process of their own development, in the development of their countries and that of Africa at large.

Technology giants such as Microsoft and Google have been aware that millions of Africans are more familiar with their languages than the inherited colonial languages used in most African countries. They are therefore making efforts to leverage on this by having technology available in African languages. Language interface pack that turns English into local languages (Swahili, Zulu, Sesotho Afrikaans and Setswana have already been developed. This will reach out to an estimated 150 million people. While works are also ongoing to extend the technology to Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Wolof, Amharic, Kinyarwanda… This affirms the importance of African languages and the need to promote them, to convey information and knowledge to the African peoples in languages they are familiar with as a means of access to information, knowledge and hence their development.

Even in the education sector, the use of a familiar language as language of instruction is central for classroom learning. There is general consensus that students learn better when they understand what the teacher is saying. In countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Korea, Japan… children have the advantage of starting their formal education in a language familiar to them, the language they normally speak and master. While in most African countries, the language of instruction remains the former colonial languages, this has been a barrier to knowledge for a huge number of African children especially in their formative stage which is probably the most important stage. Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies Of African Society,  Kwesi kwaa praa alluded that developmental transformation can only be achieved if “we can take knowledge and modern science to the masses in their own languages.

Therefore, for a prosperous, peaceful and integrated Africa, we must look to promote African languages and make information, knowledge and technology available to our people in their own languages.