The meeting brought together experts from African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) and discusses the importance of African languages to people once they were used in communication.
According to the Executive Secretary of Rwanda Academy of Language and Culture (RALC), Dr. James Vuningoma, international languages are meant for businesses, diplomacy and people-to-people exchanges.
“It has been observed that for Africans to be self-reliant, they need to promote own languages. They should not leave them behind as it was done by colonizers. Colonizers did not want inter-communication between Africans. We want to see how African languages could be used in communication without interpreters,” he explained.
Vuningoma is optimistic that the target will be achieved, as for instance, people in regional countries are easily communicating.
The Executive Secretary of ACALAN, Dr. Lang Fafa Dampha said the organization’s function is to empower African languages by creating terminology and harmonizing their writing system so that they can be used in universities and be used as languages of instruction.
“ACALAN is instituting the school of interpretation and translation in which we are not going to translate from European language to another; we are going to translate from Kinyarwanda to Kiswahili or to Lingala. This is to empower our languages so that we can use them in meetings and offices among others,” he explained.
Africa has over 2000 languages among which few like Kiswahili, Yoruba and Amharic are popular.
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