South Africa will become the first African country outside of the East African region to start teaching Africa’s most widely spoken language, Swahili, in schools. Swahili is both the official and national language in both Kenya and Tanzania being among the few African countries where an indigenous African language is the official language. The other countries include Ethiopia – Amharic, Somalia – Somali, Lesotho – Sotho, Swaziland – Swazi all respectively, and South Africa where the official languages include Zulu and Xhosa among others.

In a seeming embrace of outspoken Pan African advocate, politician Julius Malema, South Africans will begin learning the language nationally in 2020. Julius Malema has advocated for a United Africa with a single language, Swahili and a single currency.

Indeed Swahili is the most widely spoken African language, spoken universally in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Congos as well as in Cameroon.

Swahili is an ideal language to adopt and teach across Africa because it is quite an easy language for anyone to learn. Everything in Swahili is written phonetically, making it easy to read for anyone. Additionally the language is a hybrid of a number of Bantu African languages, widely spoken across all of Africa, with sprinklings of Arabic, English, Portuguese, Chinese and Indian languages, and as such almost anyone will find that there are words in Swahili that they recognize. Chai, (tea) derived from broth Chinese and Indian languages is perhaps the most recognized and widely used Swahili word.

Africa would certainly benefit from greater unity without which it is impossible to fight against the forces described in the infamous “Confessions of An Economic Hitman”, the book by John Perkins.