The Senior Projects and Programmes Officer of the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN), Dr. Babajide Ojo has hightlighted some of the core project of ACALAN.

He brought the programmes to the fore while addressing delegates at the just concluded meeting with CERDOTOLA and CICIBA and the review of PANMAPAL curriculum which was held recently in Yaoundé.

According to Dr. Babajide, “The aim of PANMAPAL is to train qualified linguists, language professionals, educators and other professionals in African languages to become specialists in African languages and the application of relevant linguistic theories in the resolution of issues and challenges that arise in the implementation of status, corpus and planning connected to projects in relation to African languages.”

Dr. Babajide disclosed that the first phase of that project has been completed and students have graduated from the three languages and as a matter of fact one of the products of that project was in attendance at the just concluded meeting.

He noted that the academy also have programs for the children like the ‘Stories Across Africa’. He stated that the Stories Across Africa project is aimed at producing anthologies of stories for children in their own languages. He added that old and new stories are presently been collated, written and re-written, translated and illustrated for the modern day African children in urban and rural setting.

He added that African Language in the Cyberspace is another major project been undertaken by the Academy. He said, “African Language in the Cyberspace is making African languages to be accepted bearing in mind that access to ICT is an essential means to support and to achieve meaningful and sustainable development in any society and in order to safeguard, preserve and develop and promote African languages it is necessary to equip them with appropriate terminologies and technology that will allow them respond to the demands imposed by ICT. 

“The Terminology and Lexicography project brings together all works done in Lexicography and Terminology building in major languages all over Africa with a view to publish the unpublished ones and updating the already published ones using the unified methodological frameworks developed by experts in Lexicography in collaboration with ACALAN in 2010.”

Others are the Pan-African School for Translation and Interpretation and the Linguistic Atlas project.