Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the mobility of urban Deaf persons in West and Central Africa with focusing on the creation of transnational/national sign languages and identities among Deaf communities. The history and the actuality observed in the field of English/French-speaking countries will be shown.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the mobility of urban Deaf persons in West and Central Africa with focusing on the creation of transnational/national sign languages and identities among Deaf communities. The history and the actuality observed in the field of English/French-speaking countries will be shown. During the era of colonial rule by France, Britain and Belgium, there existed no school education for the deaf in West and Central Africa. It was 1957, when Andrew J. Foster, an American Deaf pastor/educator, founded the first school for the deaf in these areas in Accra, Ghana, just the year of the independence of this country.

In 1973, his mission founded the Christian Center for the Deaf in Ibadan, Nigeria for the purpose of the training for the teachers in French-speaking countries. The series of teacher-training courses in Ibadan invited at least 163 trainees from at least 19 countries in Africa.

After the training, these trainees returned to their homeland to become teachers for deaf children and became the core persons who created national and transnational sign languages. The schools and churches for the deaf founded and managed by them in urban areas became the nodes of the signing communities and the transnational mobility of Deaf migrants.

Both transnational and national identities of the Deaf were created among them through the frequent international exchanges of Deaf persons. This paper also points out that the naming of their sign languages is also one of the results of the mobility of urban Deaf persons within African Continent.