Education and language: A human right for sustainable development in Africa

Pre-colonial Africa was neither an educationally nor a technologically unsophisticated continent. While education was an integral part of the culture, issues of language identification and standardisation which are subject to contentious debate today were insignificant. Children learned community knowledge and history by asking questions instead of being taught in a hegemonic alien language. This article argues that education and development should take place in a broader context of human rights, and explores the links between three areas often dealt with separately, namely: language, education and development. The authors of this paper demonstrate that changing the face of the multi-dimensionalities of poverty within societies is possible only when education is constructed in a rights perspective over the favoured colonial languages, which are not an integral part of the culture and resources of a community. The authors make a distinction between the right to education and rights in education, the latter of which are found to be more significant for the challenges Africa faces. It is argued here that the elements of Amartya Sen's "threshold" conditions for inclusion in human rights and self-development in education are essential, and that a more promising architecture of education would include what the authors term meta-narrative frameworks, i.e. interrelated policies. The authors contend that the neoliberal commodification of the knowledge sector has only exacerbated human rights and capabilities deprivation — which encompasses both human and income poverty. Éducation et langage : un droit fondamental en vue du développement durable en Afrique — L'Afrique précoloniale était un continent sophistiqué tant sur le plan éducatif que technologique. Si l'enseignement faisait partie intégrante de la culture, les questions d'identification et de standardisation linguistiques, aujourd'hui sujettes à des débats controversés, n'étaient pas significatives. Les enfants acquéraient le savoir et l'histoire de la communauté en posant des questions, et non pas en étant instruits dans une langue étrangère et hégémonique. Les auteurs avancent que l'éducation et le développement devraient avoir lieu dans le contexte élargi des droits fondamentaux, et examinent les liens entre trois domaines fréquemment traités isolément, à savoir : langage, éducation et développement. Ils démontrent qu'il n'est possible de changer la face multidimensionnelle de la pauvreté au sein des socié