Word of
Mr Adama Samassekou
President/Interim Executive
Secretary of the African Academy of Languages
Was
it not Amadou Hampaté BA who said that of all the elements which best characterise an individual, from physical appearance to clothing, language is the most obvious?
It is through language that we convey our ideas, and that we communicate with others. Thus, it enables us to share our cultural experience. Our linguistic repertory and our choice of the phrases determine not only who we are, but also the place and the circumstances of the moment.
Because language transcends the individual in favour of his community, it consequently becomes our property and that of our culture. It is through language that we acquire and transmit our knowledge and our know-how which facilitate a certain domination over our environment. It stands, indeed, as the key component and the barometer of our development.
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Four decades after the political 'independences' however, the situation of African languages keeps on widening inequalities in the fields of science, technique, and technology.
This imbalance between official languages, inherited from colonisation, and African languages, far from facilitating a better sharing of modern knowledge and practices, jeopardises any significant involvement of our populations in the process of decision making on the one hand, and in the improvement of their living conditions on the other. Therefore, our commitment to the ideals of the O.A.U., the pressing call of our people for a quick and more involving access to writing and true democracy, the requirements of an ever lasting sub-regional and regional stability, have imposed upon us the creation of an instrument for the development of our languages, likely to facilitate and reinforce linguistic co-operation between African states and, moreover, to promote the harmonisation and the actual implementation of language policies conform to the aspirations of our working populations.
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