WRITER: Dr. Caesar Jjingo. PHOTO/FILE/COURTESY
Since the inception of the current East African Community (EAC) in 1999, it was on November 30, that Kiswahili was officially adopted as the bloc’s official language, along with French.
This means presently, three languages are serving this function, including English, which has enjoyed this status since the inception of the EAC. In brief, it has taken the EAC almost 25 years to officially adopt an African language, Kiswahili, as one of its official languages.
The possible inclusion of French in the lineup of the EAC’s official languages is to harmonise the full participation of francophone countries – Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and partly Rwanda – in the bloc’s predominantly Anglophone-based engagements. I hope the near future holds for the adoption of more African languages e.g., Arabic (South Sudan) and Somali (Somalia) into the bloc's list of official languages.
Well, I received news of this remarkable milestone on Kiswahili while watching a YouTube channel that is advocating to change the name as well as enhance the standardisation processes of the orthography of Patois, the ‘Jamaican creole’. Since the 1650s, Patois has evolved from a pidgin to Creole. Patois has largely remained a spoken language yet it is globally used due to the gradual spread of reggae music and its related genres.
Like Patois, studies have revealed that while Kiswahili has a standardised orthography, it is continuously evolving as a result of borrowed words from other languages and variations in newly coined words, mainly from advancements in science and technology.
Thus, with the new function of Kiswahili in the EAC, our thoughts need to be directed to the convention(s) in which official Kiswahili documents, treaties, communiques and meetings will be adopted. Presently, such thoughts are central since different EAC partner states have demonstrated particular established formal conventions in using Kiswahili either in spoken or written forms. For instance, in Uganda, I recently experienced the use of naibu mwalimu mkuu (deputy head teacher) and naibu rais (deputy president) as used in Kenya. In the Tanzanian context, the above two examples would be mwalimu mkuu msaidizi (assistant head teacher) and makamu wa rais (vice president).
While the above examples demonstrate the tip of the iceberg, the East African Kiswahili Commission may need to do an in-depth survey to establish the existing contrasting use of such common Kiswahili words/phrases in all EAC partner states. Subsequently, a list of the lexicon of such variations should be published and distributed to all partner states for (i) information purposes and (ii) their subsequent adoption for formal use in particular regional contexts.
Yes, it is timely for the East African Kiswahili Commission to execute this obligation since 99 percent of the EAC partner states lack Kiswahili councils. The absence of such councils has greatly contributed to the ‘unconventional’ use of Kiswahili in formal domains. It is because, among other obligations, such councils play regulatory roles in ensuring that a balanced formal use of the language(s) prevails mainly in the absence of language (Kiswahili) policies in member states.
Thus, to add to the previous voices, after adopting the Kiswahili language as an official language of the EAC, what should be next on the agenda is the establishment of Kiswahili councils in the remaining partner states – Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda. The establishment of such councils will nationally give meaning to Kiswahili and underscore its regional purpose to interest countries’ full integration into the multilingual EAC.
