Prospects for Linguistic and Cultural Diversity to Enhance African Political Governance

Abstract

This chapter seeks to contribute some new ideas on how Africa’s rich and diverse linguistic heritage could potentially be leveraged towards developing an innovative framework for political governance and greater pan-African understanding. I posit that unless languages are mobilized negatively and manipulated instrumentally to cause divisions in Africa, they remain a rich resource that can facilitate the task of fashioning a sense of common African identity and citizenship. The chapter argues that instead of focusing on the ‘problems’ of language diversity, we need to pay attention to the prospects, and spheres of possibilities for good political governance presented by the language resources at our disposal. This means we need to work within a framework that can harness inter- and cross-cultural similarities among the African people within and across different national borders in order to maximize the potential benefits of Africa’s linguistic resources, especially in the domains of regional economic integration, cross-border trade and political integration. What affordances do Africa’s cultural and linguistic resources provide for creativity and innovation in our quest for good and inclusive political governance systems? What would Africa’s political governance systems look like if we were to recognize the diversity of African languages as an opportunity and not a liability?