[lg policy] French is out of fashion in Rwanda: English replaced French as the official language of instruction in schools in 2008

[Don Osborn]

A whole article about language in Rwanda and not a mention of Kinyarwanda?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu [mailto:lgpolicy-list-
> bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of Harold Schiffman
> Sent: Friday, April 23, 2010 4:46 PM
> To: lp
> Subject: [lg policy] French is out of fashion in Rwanda: English
> replaced French as the official language of instruction in schools in
> 2008
> 
> French is out of fashion in Rwanda: English replaced French as the
> official language of instruction in schools in 2008
> 
> by Kaj Hasselriis on Thursday, April 22, 2010
> 
> Reuters/ Getty
> 
> When Governor General Michaëlle Jean visits Rwanda next week she might
> have to bite her tongue about the country’s new language policy. After
> a century of close ties to France and Belgium, the East African nation
> is phasing out français and embracing English. “English is becoming
> more and more dominant in the world,” says Arnaud Nkusi, anchor of
> Rwanda’s state-owned TV news. “It’s all about business. You have to
> move with the rest of the world.”
> 
> Jean’s trip will mark the first state visit to Rwanda from a
> Commonwealth country since it joined that 54-state organization late
> last year. But cozying up to Britain and its former colonies is only
> the latest chapter in Rwanda’s move to English. Many say it all
> started with the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when members of the
> country’s Hutu ethnic group killed up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate
> Hutus. The country blames France for helping arm the instigators, and
> then not doing enough to stop the carnage.
> 
> In the wake of the genocide, Rwanda’s main donor became the United
> States. Meanwhile, thousands of exiles returned to their homeland from
> Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda—neighbouring English-speaking countries
> where many Rwandans picked up the language. Then, in 2006, a French
> judge dropped a bombshell. He accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a
> Tutsi, of helping start the genocide because of his alleged complicity
> in the rocket attack of April 6, 1994, that killed Rwanda’s Hutu
> president Juvenal Habyarimana—the spark for the massacre. Furious,
> Kagame shut down the French Embassy, kicked out the ambassador,
> ordered Radio France Internationale off the air in Rwanda, and closed
> the local French cultural centre. Two years later, in 2008, Kagame
> announced that English—which became one of Rwanda’s official languages
> in 1994—would replace French as the official language of instruction
> in the country’s schools. In the wake of that momentous step,
> thousands of Rwandan schoolteachers were fired because they couldn’t
> teach the new language.
> 
> According to Nkusi, there has been very little public resistance to
> the government’s pro-English campaign. Kagame has a firm grip on power
> and Rwandans are not known as protesters. In fact, most citizens are
> reluctant to give their opinions even in private. But during an
> interview with a group of Rwandan teacher-trainers, some of them open
> up. “French flows in my veins,” says Ladislas Nkundabanyanga. “My
> father taught me French and my friends all speak French.” Nowadays,
> though, he knows kindergarten students who don’t understand the word
> “bonjour.” As a result, he’s convinced the French language in Rwanda
> is doomed. Nkundabanyanga’s colleague, Beatrice Namango, agrees. The
> new policy, she says, is “like telling me to keep quiet. It’s stopping
> me from talking.”
> 
> The teacher-trainers’ boss is a Canadian named Mark Thiessen, from
> Williams Lake, B.C. He likens the slow demise of French in Rwanda to
> the death of Aboriginal languages in Canada. “Slowly, French in Rwanda
> will disappear,” Thiessen says. “It might take one or two generations,
> but it will.”
> 
> Nkusi says he’s partial to French, too, but he sees the language
> change as an economic necessity. “French is the language of the
> heart,” he says, “but English is the language of work.” And Rwandans
> are working hard to show they’re competitive in an emerging African
> market. Every building in the country looks like it just got a fresh
> coat of paint, and the GDP is growing by an average of five per cent a
> year. “The country’s wealth is not in the soil, it’s in the minds of
> its citizens,” says Nkusi. “The leadership is smart enough to know
> that and develop an information technology sector like India’s.”
> 
> Nkusi also parrots a popular line of Kagame’s. “Rwanda isn’t becoming
> unilingual,” he says, “it’s simply making room for new languages.”
> Rwanda’s capital only has one private French school left, but a
> Chinese school just opened up, too. Besides, Nkusi adds, Rwanda is now
> a member of both the Commonwealth and la Francophonie, the
> organization of French states—like Canada. Michaëlle Jean might like
> to highlight that, too.
> 
> http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/04/22/french-is-out-of-fashion-in-rwanda/
> 
> 
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