Many people in Kenya and Tanzania, for example, speak their own native languages and only communicate in Kiswahili at a more public level. What Ugandans must come to terms with is the fact that Kiswahili is a Bantu language that serves as a second language to diverse groups of peoples inhabiting parts of East and Central Africa. This population is a huge market and source of skilled and semi-skilled labour for all these countries, but Uganda will miss out from this as only a very tiny minority of its people speaks any Kiswahili.
The promotion of the Kiswahili language will not be limited to simply its usage, but it will also help the East African Community (EAC) that was revived in 1999 to co-operate in trade, politics, social, media, education systems, among others, and it will fully play its role as the regional lingua franca.Ī later phase of the new EAC saw other Kiswahili speaking nations like Burundi and Rwanda join the original members (Kenya Tanzania, and Uganda), making the region have a combined population of about 132 million and cover an area of 1.8 million square kilometres, according to the East African Community Facts and Figures (2009). I believe that this initiative has been long overdue. Recently, the First Deputy Premier and Minister of East African Affairs, Eriya Kategaya, issued a directive to the effect that by the beginning of next year, Kiswahili, as a language, be taught and examined compulsorily in schools in Uganda, right from primary level.
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