The maiden African Language Week is here upon us. The African Language Week provides an opportunity to showcase and promote African languages and cultures across the continent of Africa. Africa is said to be the most linguistically diverse continent of the world. Our language diversity should serve as our strength – a factor for unification and development.

The African Language Week was made possible by ACALAN, the specialized linguistic arm of the African Union charged with the development and promotion of African languages. The language body made the proposal for African Language Week which was endorsed by the Ministers of Culture in AU member states.

What a way to promote African languages. African languages will be under the spotlight all through this period – January 24 to 31- and deservedly so. Various activities will be designed around celebrating our various languages. ACALAN’s working structures in the AU member states will be expected to play a leading role in this regard.

The African Language Week is a window to celebrate and reflect on our languages. A time to take stock on how our languages are faring in comparison to other languages. This will help us to objectively see where we stand in our language development endeavors – where we have gotten it right and where we still have work to be done.

Without doubt African language development has made a huge stride in recent years and credit must be given to ACALAN for that. Language development is however a continuous process, therefore, ACALAN cannot afford to rest on its oars as more still needs to be done in preserving endangered languages and also promoting supposedly safe languages.