The African Academy of Languages, ACALAN has joined forces with the Centre for Research and Documentation on African Traditions and Languages (CERTODOLA) to actualize the linguistic atlas project.

The fact that CERTODOLA already has data and linguistic maps of Central Africa countries made the collaboration all the more necessary giving ACALAN room to save time and resources.

Speaking at the just concluded ACALAN meeting with CERTODOLA and CICIBA on Linguistic Atlas and the review of Pan-Africa Master’s and PhD Program in African Languages and Applied Linguistics, President of ACALAN’s Assembly of Academicians, Prof. Beban Chumbow said, “ACALAN organized this meeting with CERTODOLA so that we can see what we can do together to ensure the atlas project is realized, to initiate a cross fertilization of ideas that will enable us to move the agenda of the linguistic atlas forward as expected by the African Union.

On the linguistic atlas project, the Senior Program & Project officer of ACALAN, Dr. Babajide Ojo said, “The program is about knowing how many languages we have in Africa and then been able to plan for the development of these languages.”

The Linguistic Atlas project is one of ACALAN’s core projects which seek to establish the precise number of African languages, their interrelations and dialectical differences. The project is also expected to determine the number of speakers of each language, their distribution, the status of the various languages, and availability of language policies among other things.