ACALAN Executive Secretary, Dr. Lang Fafa Dampha has highlighted some of the responsibilities of the newly institutes language commissions.

He made it known while speaking at the just concluded ACALAN operation and planning workshop in Kigali.

He said, “I want to thank all the country presenters for their remarks and presentations. The commissions present here are doing remarkable work. We would ask ourselves how come we didn’t come to these commissions since we started.”

He commended the Isizulu and Sango language commissions noting that they are doing nationally exactly what ACALAN are doing continentally.

According to him, “Establishing a commission is a process and the process has started and it will continue. You are going to be responsible for developing our languages at the grassroots in your regions and in your various countries and we will continue doing what we need to do. We have seen the advantages that we can build on and we continue good practices and there are challenges as well that we will need to surmount and try to do it. You are going to raise funds, you are going to implement our projects at the grassroots, you are going to manage the projects, monitor and evaluate these projects and this is going to be done with ACALAN. So we congratulate you for these presentation and we say the African renaissance will continue.

“The idea of establishing these language commissions and even ACALAN itself is to promote African integration and development, promote African solidarity, commerce and cooperation. All languages are important for African Union and ACALAN and we are here to promote all African languages as vibrant factor of African integration and development. The presence of a language in a region signifies in the perspective of linguistic diversity to protect and promote these languages because languages are assets and African languages are assets for Africans as well.”

The ACALAN Executive Secretary added, “ACALAN has six core projects, one of these six core projects which were conceived when ACALAN was formed is the Linguistic Atlas project whose objective is to determine the exact number of African languages spoken on the continent. These are part of the responsibilities of the language commissions, we have started with the linguistic atlas of West African region and other regions are to follow.

“ACALAN’s responsibility as the main language agency of AU is to promote all African languages, we cannot have the Africa we want, the Agenda 2063 cannot be actualized without African language. Language is the main pillar of our culture and our culture is the main pillar of our development.”