Across Africa, a quiet crisis is unfolding in classrooms and living rooms alike. Indigenous languages \u2014 once the heartbeat of communities \u2014 are slowly fading as English, French, Portuguese, and other dominant languages take over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The warning comes from Olamide Olowe, founder of The Orphans Empowerment Consult, who recently raised the alarm in a widely shared post. She points out that parents often push their children toward dominant languages, believing they offer better access to education, jobs, and social mobility. It’s a reasonable choice on its face. But the long-term cost, she argues, is steep: many children grow up rejecting their mother tongue altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olowe’s bigger concern, though, is what happens in schools. In Nigeria, she notes, indigenous languages are technically part of education policy, especially in early years. But in practice, they often vanish from the curriculum as students move into secondary school \u2014 treated as optional, then forgotten entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This isn’t just a Nigerian problem. It’s an African one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Kenya to Ghana, South Africa to Senegal, similar patterns repeat. Hundreds of African languages are classified as endangered, with some falling out of use entirely within a generation. UNESCO estimates that nearly half the world’s languages could disappear by the end of this century \u2014 and Africa, home to roughly a third of all living languages, has the most to lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This matters for more than nostalgia. The African Union’s Agenda 2063 \u2014 the continent’s long-term blueprint for development \u2014 explicitly calls for an Africa with a strong cultural identity, shared values, and ethics. Language sits at the core of that identity. You cannot build a confident, self-determined Africa while losing the languages that carry its history and knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olowe’s proposed fix is simple: keep indigenous languages compulsory throughout basic education, even where they aren’t the main language of instruction. Pair that with parents speaking these languages at home, and policymakers actually enforcing existing language policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her closing question is one every African nation should be asking: what will it take to make our languages matter again \u2014 in classrooms, not just in policy documents?<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":1448,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[337,10],"tags":[40,378,237,33,31,368,190,365,240,375,329,376,377,238,379],"class_list":["post-1444","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agenda-2063","category-news","tag-acalan","tag-african-identity","tag-african-languages","tag-african-union","tag-agenda-2063","tag-cultural-heritage","tag-education","tag-indigenous-languages","tag-language-policy","tag-language-preservation","tag-mother-tongue-education","tag-multilingual-education","tag-schools-in-africa","tag-sustainable-development","tag-youth-development"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n