Somalia includes the Swahili language in its national curriculum

The Somali president announced that he would introduce Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa, into its national curriculum.

English is used as the language of instruction for most subjects nationally in secondary schools, with Arabic being the other compulsory second language currently taught.

But President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said that the Swahili language should also be taught in schools and universities, which was what was stated in this declaration during the East African Community summit held in the capital, Mogadishu.

Somalia officially joined the eight-nation regional trade bloc last year with the aim of boosting economic growth after three decades of war.

With over 200 million speakers, Swahili is one of the ten most widely spoken languages ​​in the world.

“The country’s universities, especially the Somali National University, should focus more on developing the Swahili language, which is the language of East Africa,” President Mohamud said.

“Adopting the Swahili language is important for our integration into the region,” he said.

Education Minister Farah Sheikh Abdul Qadir added that the government has great ambitions to adopt the Swahili language nationally.

“We want to see Swahili become a language of communication, trade and learning – and even replace English during our next conference,” he said at the East African Community meeting.

Swahili dialects are already spoken along Somalia’s southern coast, and the language has been used more widely across the country in recent years — one consequence of the civil war that broke out in 1991 and has brought decades of instability and more recently jihadist violence.

Hundreds of thousands of people have sought refuge across the border into Kenya, many of whom have learned how to speak Swahili – especially those who have gone through the Kenyan education system.

As the situation in Somalia has stabilized somewhat in recent years, some of these Swahili speakers have returned fluent or have links back home, while the presence of African Union forces has also led to the language’s growth.

These soldiers, many from East African countries, have been deployed since 2007, and Swahili is often their lingua franca.

Until 2016, Arabic was the language of instruction in Somalia in middle schools and English at the secondary and university levels.

Now the national curriculum for primary schools is taught in the Somali language, with the curriculum remaining in English for higher education – and Arabic used in religious or Islamic schools.