• Language of instruction in Africa shows a persistent tension between colonial languages and indigenous tongues, shaping education access, literacy, and development policy. This pattern is evidenced across policy analyses, World Bank discussions and SA case studies [1], [8], [13], [10], [16], [11].

• Viewed as a developmental resource and governance asset, multilingualism is framed as a tool for democratization and growth, guiding programmatic research and policy critique in SA and beyond [16], [11], [10].

• Codeswitching in urban Africa reveals systematic structuring and social accommodation, with matrix languages often governing grammar and language choice, influencing education and policy in multilingual settings [5], [4], [3].

• Descriptive grammars and corpus resources form infrastructure for African linguistics, enabling empirical analysis and historical documentation across Hausa, Zulu, South African English and related languages [18], [20], [7], [12], [9].

• Endangerment and revival are foregrounded as central concerns, highlighting at-risk languages, documentation gaps, and revival efforts across Africa [15], [19], [6].