{UAH} Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Start with your mother tongue if we are going to decolonise Africa

Young people are always the future of any country, the future of any nation. Do you want to know the character or the future of any nation? Look at the young people, what they are reading, what language they are speaking, what their behavioural patterns are, what knowledge they are getting and that will give a clue as to the future of that country.

My policy which I am advocating is simple: Start with your mother tongue. Then, know whichever is the lingua franca or the language which can enable people from different linguistic communities to speak to each other and then add English, French and any other language. So we have a minimum of three, I mean triple language policy. My philosophy is summed up this way: If you know all, and I mean all, the languages of the world and you do not know your mother tongue, that is enslavement. If you know your mother tongue and add all the languages of the world to it, that is empowerment.

Mother tongue, lingua franca and then French or English or whatever. That is how we are going to decolonise Africa because that also creates an attitude. You see, knowing only English and French creates an attitude that knowledge comes from outside. That all is good and everything else comes from outside and you can see it has created a mentality in Africa where even African leaders look for validation from the West. If initiative comes from within the country, they are suspicious of it unless there is validation and it is never the other way around. Start with ourselves, add to it. It is very simple but very effective. Then you are able to build confidence, to create inventors, discoverers, makers of things because we have the three language policy. But the key thing is starting with the mother tongue, build confidence and then we shall get engineers, inventors, and makers of things with our gold, with our diamonds, with our copper, with all the resources we have now. 90 percent of African resources are controlled by the West. Africa, if I may say so, has been the eternal donor to the west."

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

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