Botswana has decided to introduce Swahili language in the southern African country’s local schools, a senior official said Tuesday. Botswana introduces Swahili language in schools
Speaking At a language teaching workshop in Francistown, Botswana’s second-largest city, Fidelis Molao, Botswana’s Minister of Basic Education, said that Swahili language will be introduced in schools in future.
KiSwahili is a Bantu language widely spoken in the Great Lakes region and other parts of eastern and south-eastern Africa including Oman,Somalia,Mozambique,Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and parts of Malawi.
If introduced, Swahili will be the first African language from outside the boundaries of the world’s largest producer of diamonds by value. Botswana introduces Swahili language
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) region will be one of the major trading partners with many Swahili-speaking countries in the near future, which Botswana needs most as it is vying for an export-led economy, Molao said. To ensure efficiency, he noted the government would hire teachers from countries that had established the language in their schools so as they can help in rolling out the programme.
“We are going to spend money ourselves as the South African government to ensure it prospers and it thrives and a lot more people learn it particularly from our schools,” he said . South Africa has 11 officials languages that are taught in schools and has adopted some foreign languages in the syllabus over the years.
Its known that English, French and Portuguese are the three languages currently used by the SADC.
