Linguistic shift underway in Senegal, where Wolof is overtaking French

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00:00Amina grew up in Europe but is trying to start a new life in Senegal, the land of her ancestors.

00:07Every week, the 24-year-old takes Wolof classes online, at this Dakar café.

00:18It's a language that you need to master in order to integrate in social spaces, to live well,

00:24to be able to communicate with people and understand the culture and so on.

00:29Recently, new publishing houses that cater to a local readership have sprung up in Senegal.

00:35Ejo is among them, publishing in Wolof and a dozen other local languages.

00:43A publishing house should reflect the language spoken by the population.

00:47And the language spoken by the population here is in French.

00:50French is part of our history, but we need to claim ownership of our own language before expanding it to others.

00:58Shifts are also happening in education.

01:01Besides French, the government wants local languages to also be systematically taught in schools by 2029,

01:08as research suggests that this could help pupils do better across the curriculum.

01:14When children learn their mother tongue, they're more likely to succeed in school.

01:18They participate much more in class, they're more interested, they do better and the success rate is visibly higher.

01:24A pilot phase was introduced in 2018.

01:27Education authorities are developing linguistic maps to adapt teaching to reflect the needs of each part of the country.

01:36We have some challenges. One is teacher training.

01:39Another is whether it will be possible to produce enough teaching materials, enough textbooks for each national language.

01:45We have 20 codified languages, which is a lot.

01:50Things are changing in the digital space too.

01:53Wolof has been available on Google Translate since July, alongside some 30 other African languages.

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