Paper short abstract:

For Kenya to breakthrough in her economic development agenda, African languages must be adopted in education, and adapted to fufil the needs of the changing technological space, for the general population to benefit from digitisation, globalisation and economic empowerment initiatives.

Paper long abstract:

Deumert (2015:562), while describing language in the media, opines that “Sociolinguists, have been exploring new media as an area of study which allows fresh perspectives on topics which are central to the discipline: multilingualism and linguistic diversity, language variation and change, style and register, language and identity, language ideologies, interactional linguistics, and language and globalization”. With changing technological space in Africa, African languages have penetrated digital spaces as communities attempt to engage in their native tongues. The internet is increasingly regarded as a linguistic or virtual linguistic landscape which can be researched like any other context of language use. This paper attempts to give an overview of the use of African languages in digital space, the tenacity of these languages in promoting social change, development and learning. It also highlights some grassroots and social initiatives to promote the use of African languages in the media and their impact on Africa’s development agenda. The political and social implications for the presence or absence of these languages will be discussed including various national language policies as the government of Kenya re-introduces learning in African languages in formative years of schooling. Data and examples used to illustrate the arguments in this paper will be drawn mostly from Kenya, with additional examples from other parts of Africa.

References

Deumert, A. (2015). Linguistics and social media. In Allan Keith (ed.) The Routledge Handbook in Linguistics, 561-573. New York: Routledge