The Minister of Sports and Culture of Rwanda, Julienne Uwacu has reiterated the need for language development to herald the development of the African continent.

Representative of the honourable Minister, Prof. Cyprien Niyomugabo made this known at the just conclueded ACALAN workshop with media practitioners held in Kigali.

According to him, “the Africa we want is built on cultural values, our languages.”

He noted that  ACALAN’s motto of ‘African languages for peaceful integration of Africa’ clearly highlights the importance of African languages and the terms of reference for the workshop portray the role of media  in promoting  African languages.

The Minister called on ACALAN to reach out to Africa’s rural communities who cannot access ACALAN’s online TV.

He revealed that the government of Rwanda made choices in terms of language planning and development to the effect that Kinyarwanda and three other languages; English, French and Kiswahili are used as official languages. She stated that terminologies have been developed in Kinyarwanda and the media is being used to popularise them. He also pointed out the introduction of Masters and PHD programmes in Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili at university level as a way of promoting the language.

The chairman of the session, Dr Burama Jammeh re-echoed Prof. Niyomugabo’s stance stressing that “the Africa we want” cannot be achieved without developing African languages.

He urged African countries to learn from Rwanda’s policy that recognises four official languages, two of them being African languages and the pace at which it is growing.