EdData II: Data for Education Research and Programming (derp) in Africa

1.2 
Putting research into practice 
Despite the acknowledgment by many of those responsible for education sector planning and 
funding that children learn better when they understand the language used for teaching, questions 
and concerns about how to operationalize L1-based education and to provide effective 
instruction of—or in—additional languages often lead to stakeholders to question whether L1-
based education is feasible or even necessary, especially where demand is high for skills in non-
indigenous languages such as English and French. These frequently cited concerns include the 
following: 
•
assumptions that the large number of languages in many countries makes instruction in 
familiar languages too complicated and costly;
African languages as a means of wider communication 
The case for using African languages for instruction is supported by 
the fact that many are large national and international languages of 
wider communication used by millions of speakers.
For example, Hausa is estimated to be the L1 of 24 million people, 
while approximately 15 million use it as an L2/Lx 
(http://www.ethnologue.com/language/hau). Other languages used 
for communication by tens of millions of people across multiple 
countries include Kiswahili, Igbo, Fulfulde, Amharic, and Yoruba. 
These and many other languages in sub-Saharan Africa are so vital 
to information, access, and communication that many organizations 
and businesses are making their content and products available in 
them. For example, the BBC offers news content in Hausa and 
Kiswahili, while Microsoft Office is now available in several sub-
Saharan African languages (http://products.office.com/en-
us/language-packs/microsoft-office-language-options-multilingual-
support). Mobile phone providers increasingly offer services and 
notifications in locally used languages as well.
Giving children an opportunity to gain literacy and other skills in these 
languages serves to facilitate and support inter-country commerce 
and communication, as well as to build the status of these languages 
as international languages of wider communication.

---

3 
•
a belief that a foreign language is most effectively taught by providing instruction in it; 
•
a belief that parents are or will be opposed to instruction in national languages; 
•
opposition by policy makers and senior education officials; 
•
an assumption that implementing L1-based education requires producing teaching and 
learning materials for all grades, in every language in the country, simultaneously; and
•
a belief that providing instruction in L1 or other languages with which children are 
familiar will lead to ethnic conflict.
Yet, as described in