Executive Secretary of the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) has emphasized the relevance of technology in the African language development process.

He gave his thoughts on the key role of technology in the attaining the mandate of the Academy in a chat with CEOAfrica in Kigali.

“Technology in this world is indispensable, you cannot do anything without it this is why ACALAN came up with the program –‘African languages in the cyber space’ which is a kind of comprehensive program where we have all aspects of technology embedded in it,” he said.

He called on AU member states, ACALAN working structures to promote the use of technology in the development programs especially the development of African languages.

He added, “Apart from technology, we want member states of the African Union to reflect on the provisions of Revised Language Plan of Action for Africa that has been validated at the same time with the statutes of the African Academy of Languages and other documents like the Linkage Between Education and Culture and the Charter for African Cultural Renaissance. We are asking them to reflect on the propositions of the Language Plan of Action for Africa to try to work with ACALAN. We are here to guide the member states in those domain because we have the expertise - our working structures and our organs to develop language policies in the member states of the AU and to encourage the use of African languages in education, media and other aspect of the society. The importance of language policies is that, if a member state develops a language policy, you are identifying the status of African languages and this clarifies our procedures and helps us to do our things correctly.

“We thank the member states of AU for providing the necessary support – finances, policies and materials so that we are able to implement our programs successfully. Our core projects will be implemented fully in 2019. We will concentrate on language policies, African language and the cyber space as a broad program because this has been recommended by the statutory organs of ACALAN, the Scientific and Technical Committee, the Governing Board of ACALAN and the Assembly of Academicians, within that project you have sub-projects like corpus, development of keyboard and development of website.”