SA collaborates with foreign varsities to preserve indigenous African languages

HIGHER Education, Science and Innovation Minister, Dr Blade Nzimande, has commended South African universities for collaborating with foreign universities in an effort to revive and preserve indigenous African languages.  

The Universities of Rhodes, North West, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape have collaborated with foreign universities on indigenous African languages, through Project Baqonde (meaning “let them understand” in Nguni languages).

Project Baqonde is funded by the European Union, and aims to facilitate and promote the use of indigenous African languages as mediums of instruction at higher education institutions in South Africa.

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“As South Africa, we welcome this important initiative by the four South African universities and also appreciate the Salamanca University in Spain, Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, who are the three partner European institutions taking part in the initiative,” Nzimande said.

He reiterated his long-held view on the importance of the development of African languages in the education system. 

“Over the years, we have witnessed the gradual dearth of our languages, apart from English and Afrikaans, in the absence of their development as languages of teaching and learning, commerce and academia more generally. The debate is no longer whether we should develop African languages as languages of scholarship in academia, but rather when and how these languages should be part of our academic discourse beyond the mere symbolism that is currently at play at most of our universities,” Nzimande said.