WRITER: Dr. Caesar Jjingo. PHOTO/FILE/COURTESY
This essay instigates the broader usage of Kiswahili, Uganda’s second official language, across the country's public spaces. It was motivated by the phrase "mtaa wa Masaka,” which a professional of Kiswahili used in one of its WhatsApp groups in Uganda.Mtaa is a Kiswahili word that means a street. Thus, the direct possible English translation of the above phrase is “street of Masaka”, or “Masaka street”.
Unless there is indeed a street in Uganda by that name, I guess it was a ‘slight’ mistake given that Masaka has been a city (jiji) since 2020 after being a district (wilaya) for a record period.Nonetheless, the mistake occurred a few days ago after the court ruling directing Kampala Capital City Authority to rename its roads, streets, and related public spaces.
Like the “Rhodes Must Fall Movement” that started in South Africa and spread to some parts of the world in the mid-2010s, which led to the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes from a public space, the gist of the attested ruling was for decolonisation purposes, as somewhat captured by advocate Apollo N Makubuya’s (2025) engagement on the question ‘what’s in the names of honoured colonial figures in Uganda’s capital city today?’ True, decolonisation has been a gradual process, and I believe it will take more time to materialise fully.
Thus, as I agitate the use of Kiswahili in Uganda's public spaces, we need to equally take into cognisant the existing artefacts, eg, in the form of streets, roads, place names, monuments, signages and statues, before they are replaced or completely removed from public spaces.
Are they already documented, and will they be well stored for easy accessibility and future use by researchers? What about the possible infringement of copyright issues on these artefacts?
Does the 1962 Uganda Independence Act have any clause on protecting the properties left behind and the associated belongings, eg, the statues, street, and road names and monuments of the signified?Anyhow, the recent ruling is an opportunity for using Kiswahili in Uganda's public spaces.
Kiswahili in such spaces will be central in cultivating cognitive visual-form mappings to Ugandans. It should be stressed that cognitive knowledge mapping is facilitative in attaining interlanguage development, a crucial period in learning any foreign language – in the sense of limited use – such as Kiswahili in the Ugandan context.
In this regard, the presence of Kiswahili in Uganda’s public spaces is envisioned to not only provide opportunities to Ugandans without prospects to study the language formally but also to increase its visibility in public spaces, which has received limited attention since 2005, when it was constitutionally articulated as the country's second official language, and as also emphasised in 2006 within Uganda’s National Cultural Policy, which is currently being reviewed.
The need for Kiswahili visibility in Uganda’s public spaces was also highlighted in one of the recent baseline studies by Makerere University. In that direction, this article still emphasises the utilisation of professionals for this instigation to achieve its goal.
The professionals should be drawn, for instance, from the pool of linguists, etymologists, geographers, historians, librarians, lexicographers, illustrators, culturalists, and arts and crafters, to mention but a few.
With such a combination, we should, for example, expect public spaces with visibilities of well-crafted Kiswahili signages that provide clear communication to guide users in Uganda’s public spaces by giving them “direction and navigation, safety and warnings, information and instructions, branding and advertisements and regulatory compliance” (ChatGPT, March 17, 2025), the way the Kiswahili word, karibu (welcome) has been demonstrated in different languages at the Uganda Revenue Authority Offices on Gayaza Road, Kampala.
Decolonisation has been a gradual process, and I believe it will take more time to materialise fully.
The writer is a Kiswahili pedagogies and materials development lecturer at Makerere University. [email protected]
