WSIS-II: Next window-shopping for Kiswahili and its 5,900 plus fellows?

By Aloyce Menda of JUSTA-AFRICA

The world masses are about to focus attention towards a huge critical forum on the soil of Africa, the second-phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS-II) planned for Tunis, Tunisia, November 16 to 18, 2005.

The WSIS-II is envisaged to be more attractive than the WSIS-I, which took place in Geneva from December 10 to 12, 2003, when the US and UK armed forces were in the heart of Iraq seriously hunting for Saddam Hussein. The big shots, Bush and Blair failed to attend the WSIS-I for obvious but anonymous reasons, hence pulling the attention of world huddles.

WSIS is the United Nations summit intended to address issues pertaining to information, communication and the technologies and structures that assemble and sustain these systems. It is ample time also for stakeholders to exhibit new technologies and innovations. About 70 heads of state participated in WSIS-I Geneva and an increased number is expected in WSIS-II Tunis.

To buy words from numerous speakers during WSIS-I, the concurrent summits are timely, topical, pertinent and legitimate. According to Professor Guy Burger of Rhodes University in South Africa, WSIS is the cradle of new thinking, vital debates, innovatory linkages and contemporary initiatives – all of which will influence our planet inhabitants.

Nevertheless, the importance and impact of the WSIS will reach the world’s poor masses very late. The low profile of the WSIS is compounded by the apparent but very complex factor of language barrier.

My national language, Kiswahili is spoken by more people than the population of English motherland UK, but was completely unheard during WSIS-I. My casual survey in the Geneva’s Palexpo conference and exhibition hall (December 09 to 13, 2003) could not reveal a single publication or any recorded sound in Kiswahili in presence during the WSIS-I. Even, the exhibition materials in the stands of eastern African nations were all in foreign languages!

I was cheerless but became more depressed after learning amazing facts from the summit. My lovely Kiswahili is doomed as a language and was just performing “window-shopping” in the summit!! Currently, about 70 per cent of all Internet content is in English and only 12 languages out of the world’s 6,000 or so accounts for about 98% of the total web content. Kiswahili language, which constitutes over 80% of the local media and public information contents in Tanzania, is not among the 12 languages. In other words, Kiswahili is among more than 5,900 world languages, which constitutes only two (02) per cent of the Internet content.

Above that, over 95% of the Tanzania population can only speak, read and write in either Kiswahili or tribal languages and hence can not comprehend most of the contents in the Internet even when they are lucky to get its access.

My wonderful Kiswahili can easily be learned and written using 24 English letters, 10 numbers and several punctuation marks but unfortunately it is almost valueless in WSIS in comparison to former colonizers’ languages. Globally, my pretty Kiswahili and its 5,900 plus fellow languages are like stadium spectators watching a single “football team” (of 11 languages) and its “one coach” (English) playing “a game” (ICT solutions) without opponents!

I am disappointed to reveal that my beautiful Kiswahili is the most popular local language of about 50 million people in east, southern and central Africa but has yet to absorb and develop its version of ICT vocabulary from the corresponding English, France and Portuguese versions, which are the languages of the former colonial powers in this region.

However, I have some rays of hope now after learning that this frustration is currently regarded as the greatest challenge by a wide continuum of linguists and ICT experts in the region. Already some academicians of the Kiswahili Research Institute (TUKI) in the University of Dar es Salaam in collaboration with the Swedish IT Consultancy firm namely IT + 46, have formed a team of scholars to deal with Open Kiswahili Localization project. The team is known as Kilinux (klnX), from combination of words – Kiswahili and Linux (http/:www.kilinux.org).

Early this year the project team unveiled to public their new edition of a Kiswahili spellchecker (http://www.o.ne.tz/spellchecker). The spellchecker works natively with Jambo OpenOffice.org, which is the first release of an office suite in Kiswahili. The software has been developed based on the free open source software openoffice 1.1.3 (http://www.openoffice.org).

The Kilinux pioneering effort does not only aim to localize free and open source software to the Kiswahili language, but also create awareness among Kiswahili speakers of the benefits of using and extending open source software. I am eager to see in WSIS-II Tunis a Kiswahili CD-R and some publications on this wonderful innovation shocking the minds of those who think Africans have no language, which depict the real African culture.

I am thrilled that the African Union (AU) approved Kiswahili as one of its official languages last year (2004) after persistent demand by the Tanzanian representatives in AU forums. Other official languages of AU are English, French, Portuguese and Arabic.

Without a smell of exaggeration I am very proud to unveil that Kiswahili is the only language that portrays the genuine culture of black Africans, having inherited the native Bantu languages in a mixture with other foreign words picked mostly from Arabic, Portuguese, Germany and English. Today, about 100 million people and 300 Africa tribes communicates in Kiswahili globally though the fluent speakers do not exceed 50 million in 150 tribes, mostly within the East Africa Community (EAC).

My great Kiswahili is the only language in Africa technically classified as a true "Lingua franca." Unlike most other African native languages it is a non-tribal language with more of an intra-national language image. Kiswahili spreads from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Northern D.R. Congo, Northern Malawi, Northern Mozambique, Northern Zambia and Somalia.

My famous Kiswahili is also spoken in Congo, Southern Sudan, the Comoro Islands, Northern Malagasy, and in some areas of the Persian Gulf. It is one of two official languages of the new East Africa Community (EAC) formed by Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. Thus, Kiswahili is most widely spoken in eastern Africa than the rest of the world.

Above that, the media in Africa and outside have accepted my Kiswahili diasporas and hence it is among the languages that features in several world radio stations such as, the BBC (UK), Radio Cairo (Egypt), the Voice of America (U.S.A.), Radio Deutschewelle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio Japan International, Radio Sweden, Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.

Finally, I am very proud to declare that my precious Kiswahili will not repeat the mistakes of the past. My Excellency Kiswahili will feature in WSIS-II confidently as a player under the African Union banner and not as a spectator or a “window shopper”.
ENDS

Aloyce Menda is the coordinator of JUSTA-AFRICA []