Into the cauldron: An interplay of indigenous and globalised knowledge with strong and weak notions of literacy and language education in Ethiopia and South Africa

TLDR

This article draws attention to a long, pre‑colonial as well as contemporary history of successes in mother‑tongue literacy and bi/multilingual educational provision in Africa. The study demonstrates that bilingual and multilingual education is feasible in Africa even under resource‑poor conditions. This is shown through two case studies of literacy and language education in Ethiopia and South Africa. Ethiopian system‑wide studies reveal that bilingual and multilingual education yields better learning outcomes than monolingual second‑language systems, while the South African case shows that despite a multilingual policy, costly monolingual practices have failed to improve education, underscoring that neo‑ and post‑colonial obfuscation in education is outdated.

Abstract

Abstract This article draws attention to a long, pre-colonial as well as contemporary history of successes in mother-tongue literacy and bi/multilingual educational provision in Africa. Two case studies of literacy and language education in Ethiopia and South Africa are presented in order to demonstrate, even under resource-poor conditions, that it is possible to provide bilingual and multilingual education in Africa. System-wide studies in Ethiopia show that such opportunities, developed as a response to the domestic needs of an African country, deliver more successful learning outcomes than do second-language, monolingually driven systems. The South African example shows that although there is a multilingual education policy intent, its application is impelled towards expensive monolingual imperatives which draw on contemporary, external-to-Africa debates on education. Such imperatives have not brought the anticipated educational rewards – rather, the reverse. The data from the case-studies are sufficiently compelling to show that neo- and post-colonial obfuscation in education is outdated.