EAC should embrace Swahili with urgency

During the Heads of State Summit in Nairobi last month, at which event the Democratic Republic of Congo was officially incorporated into the East African Community (EAC) membership, President Yoweri Museveni floated two suggestions that he argued, rightly so, could help foster peace, culture, trade and communication within the economic bloc.

Museveni said it was long overdue for the fledgling bloc to officially embrace Swahili as its language of communication and that the EAC member states should form a standing army through which it can help quell or pacify the incessant wars and ethnic strife in the region.

We fully associate with Museveni’s line of thought. However, for purposes of this space, we restrict ourselves to the aspect of language only, given that some positive conversations have already kicked off within EAC regarding the region’s security status.

Since the days of the slave trade, two centuries ago, Swahili has unofficially permeated the entire East African region where it is spoken in all corners at a basic communication level.

But political elites have never found a reason to cultivate the language into a more powerful tool of communication within its membership even as they seek to bolster trade ties among themselves.

Save for Kenya and Tanzania where Swahili is declared a national language, the same does not apply in the Member States. That lacuna does not help much insofar as trade and gelling of cultures are concerned. It is time for such a turn of the page to be legally enforced.

Remarkably, globally revered Nobel Prize-winning writer Wole Soyinka of Nigeria has argued for more than three decades now that Africa – through the African Union – should take Swahili as its official language.

Unfortunately, Soyinka has been a lone voice in this advocacy. The only other voice to have championed Swahili as a potential continental language of communication was the late President of Mozambique Samora Machel who went ahead to demonstrate his seriousness by addressing the Organisation of African Unity – the precursor to AU – in that language.

Given the numerous challenges the EAC countries have gone through over the years, it can never be too late to take that route. It is imperative that it happens. We urge the other leaders to join President Museveni in pushing for the fruition of this noble cause. It is only prudent that they do so.

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