The African Academy of Languages, ACALAN is currently working on producing a linguistic atlas of Africa. But then what exactly is a linguistic atlas? In simple terms, a linguistic atlas is a map which shows the geographical distribution of languages over a given area. Linguistic atlas of Africa is therefore a map showing the distribution of languages spoken across Africa.

Why then is ACALAN producing a linguistic map of Africa? The Academy being a specialized arm of the African Union, AU and a linguistic arm of the intergovernmental organization recognizes the role of language in any developmental process and because of its commitment to use language – African languages as a tool to develop Africa, thought it wise to develop a language map of Africa.

It is indeed a welcome development, one that warms the heart that ACALAN is thinking in this direction as there has really not been sufficient data on various African languages over the years – a problem which the atlas will help in solving.

The atlas will help establish the precise number of languages spoken across African, where these languages are spoken, the status of the languages – whether they are dominant or in danger of going extinct, whether they are cross-border languages, all this information will be laid bare.

With this information the respective governments and ministries responsible for languages across the continent can have necessary data for planning and educational purposes, the cross-border languages can have their differences harmonized, the languages that are safe can be promoted while those that are endangered can be preserved and perhaps we as Africans can learn to value and promote our languages better. We can then embrace our indigenous languages, detached every form of inferiority sentiments that have over the years been associated with them in comparison with our inherited colonial languages and possibly take a step further in making them official languages and languages of instruction in our schools.