R. Malatesha Joshi, Catherine A. McBride, Bestern Kaani & Gad Elbeheri (eds.), *Handbook of literacy in Africa*

Matthew Harley

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/lla/13946
DOI: 10.4000/13lt4
ISSN: 2822-7468

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Llacan UMR 8135 CNRS/Inalco

**Electronic reference**

Matthew Harley, "R. Malatesha Joshi, Catherine A. McBride, Bestern Kaani & Gad Elbeheri (eds.), *Handbook of literacy in Africa*, Linguistique et langues africaines [Online], 10(2) | 2024, Online since 22 March 2025, connection on 31 March 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lla/13946; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/13lt4

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R. Malatesha Joshi, Catherine A. McBride, Bestern Kaani & Gad Elbeheri (eds.), *Handbook of literacy in Africa*, Cham, Springer, 2023, ISBN 978-3-03-126249-4, DOI 10.1007/978-3-031-26250-0

Matthew Harley

SIL Global and SIL Nigeria

The *Handbook of literacy in Africa* is a timely volume looking at the state of literacy in Africa and the complex challenges of improving it. The book comprises 24 chapters by a total of 45 authors, roughly half of whom are based in Africa, with the most of the others based in North America. It covers 16 of Africa's 54 nations and looks at literacy from a broad range of perspectives such as language policy design, orthography development, pedagogical methods, curriculum design, multilingual environments, societal attitudes and aspirations, and teacher training. It is widely reported that Africa is the world's least literate continent, with the highest youth populations as well as the fastest growing populations. As literacy skills are an integral part of learning, and directly affect achievements across the curriculum, which in turn affect later academic success, this volume is a welcome and valuable resource which highlights the many factors that need to be taken into account when tackling the plethora of problems in vastly different contexts throughout the continent.

The chapters are easy to read and assume no background in literacy or knowledge of the African context, thus making the book accessible to a wide variety of researchers. Many of the chapters have a "country overview" style, giving a summary of main historical developments, current efforts and main barriers with respect to literacy development in particular countries. Their conclusions and recommendations are often fairly general, and as many countries face similar core problems, there is a certain amount of repetition from chapter to chapter. Other chapters take a more grass-roots approach and are more practical in their advice, or report on case studies of classroom experiments or observations. The main focus as a whole is on literacy in primary education, although adult literacy does get the occasional mention. In terms of key topics that are minimally addressed, the nature and effectiveness of the use of translanguaging techniques, and its advantages over the widespread practice of code-switching in the primary classroom, would probably be high on the list. Nevertheless, the volume still covers an admirable range of contexts and perspectives, and most researchers should find many helpful insights whatever their particular interests.

## EVALUATION

The book begins with a thoroughly researched overview by David Share, of the woeful state of literacy in Africa, together with some insights as to the historical and contemporary factors which have contributed to this desperate situation. What makes this chapter stand out from other such discussions however is its focus on certain factors that are often overlooked elsewhere, such as the linguistic distance between the L1 and L2 in terms of orthographic suitability and teaching methods, and the unique problems associated with using Modern Standard Arabic as the medium of instruction throughout North Africa. Other problems are mentioned in passing, but a deeper discussion of these is left for other chapters. If there was any critique to be made about such an impressive, if rather sobering, opening to the book, it is perhaps that there is not much to give the reader hope that things could potentially change, or any examples of the many good initiatives that are in progress around the continent.

In Chapter 2, Peter Daniels has the unenvious task of summarising the diversity and complexities of Africa's 2,000 or so languages in a single chapter, and one that ultimately proves so big that it detracts from the chapter's value. Often only the briefest details are given in each section, as in the subsections on Adamawa and Mande languages, which each contain just a single sentence, with several other sections not much longer. The chapter's highlight is undoubtedly its first two sections,
which give a concise summary of the continent's colonial history, including a map of major linga francas and colonial languages in use, and how linguistic classificatory methodologies have evolved over the last 70 years from Greenberg (1955) to Dimmendaal (2019).

Daniels has a much narrower topic in Chapter 3 and consequently does a finer job at doing it justice, with a well-researched overview of the continent's many non-Roman scripts both ancient and modern, extinct and current, indigenous and imported. He discusses their development and variations, including abjads (consonants only), abugidas (consonants with consistent vowel modifications), syllabaries (separate symbols for every syllable) and alphabets (separate symbols for each consonant and vowel). One interesting observation is that, out of all the scripts he mentions, the only indigenously designed non-Roman script which is still in widespread use today in sub-Saharan Africa – the N'Ko script for certain Manding languages – is the only one that has a system for marking tone.

The first half of Chapter 4, by David Roberts, gives a clear, concise summary of the major landmarks over the 200-year history of the use of Roman script orthographies in Africa, with each seminal conference or publication typically arising from the Western colonial desire to create a standard character set that could be used for all African languages. He notes how such efforts have overshadowed the numerous indigenous efforts to create alternative, arguably more suitable, orthographies whether they be syllabaries such as the Vai or Mende scripts, or abugidas like the Amharic or Mandombe. The second half of the chapter is a well-informed discussion of the contemporary issues facing orthography developers in Africa today, highlighting five major problem areas throughout the continent: under-representation of vowels, grammatical tone marking, dialect issues, cross-border issues and smartphone adaptations. For each one, he provides examples of how they are currently being addressed, highlighting the various factors that must be considered and noting solutions that have proved to be successful. His insights from this broader comparative perspective make this section stand out as one of the most helpful, up to date and succinct summaries for anyone involved in orthography development.

Chapter 5, by Barbara Trudell, Benjamin Piper & Wendi Ralaingita, begins with a concise overview of the different types of language-in-education models adopted by African governments and their attempts to implement them. The core of chapter discusses the various challenges that have arisen in the process, identifying four major issues: (1) lack of buy-in from local stakeholders resulting from misconceptions about the value of instruction in the L1; (2) non-conducive policy environments where national policy stands at odds with national identity and political direction; (3) misalignment with other national systems and structures such as teacher-training institutions and curriculum development; and (4) a language diverse environment in which many languages are going to end up being marginalised in the education system. As in the previous chapter, generalisations are helpfully supported by a host of case studies from around Africa. If the reader is hoping, as I was, from the chapter's title that there would be specific suggestions as to how to tackle the problem of multilingualism at the classroom level, then they are going to be disappointed, as the focus is primarily on national level concerns. That being said, the discussion still stands as one of the most informative and clear summaries currently available of the language-in-education situation in Africa today.

The next four chapters look at literacy in Arabic-speaking North-Africa, covering Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Morocco respectively. The first, by Gad Elbeheri, contains little information specific to Egypt, focussing instead on the nature of the Arabic language and script and the complexities it presents for reading. The second, by Youssif Zaghwani Omar, gives a lot of background information about Libya, its school system and the history of its educational policies, but only briefly mentions some of the current barriers to literacy, including security risks of attending school, overcrowding in classrooms, lack of teaching resources, an emphasis on rote-learning, and few incentives for teachers. The third chapter, by Anne Laaredj-Campbell, gives an overview of the literacy situation in Algeria from precolonial times to the present day, with a particular focus on the inclusion of women in literacy and the rising number of women enrolled in higher education. She does not suggest any solutions to the multilingual situation, and seems a little unsure as to how to categorise Darija (a fusion of Arabic, French and Berber), which she reports is the mother-tongue for most Algerians.
The fourth North-African chapter, by Mohammed Dahbi, gives an excellent, in-depth examination of the complexities of the language situation in Morocco in terms of the language ecology (Modern Standard Arabic, Moroccan (Spoken) Arabic, Amazigh (Berber), French, English and Spanish), the education system from pre-school to higher education, literacy levels, language pedagogy, and issues of social and national cohesion and identity. Particularly insightful is a transcription of a grade 3 science lesson which perfectly captures the interaction between language choice and learning outcomes. Worthy of note is the fact that the author has a rather different view to the author of the previous chapter on the scale of the linguistic difference between Spoken Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and the length of schooling in MSA that is needed to overcome the difficulties of adjusting to a new medium of education (2-3 years in this chapter vs. 9+ years in the previous chapter). The author also raises the controversial idea that late-exit mother-tongue medium education may not necessarily always be the best approach. Instead he suggests that the most suitable model in the Moroccan context is one that he describes as “a bilingualism of diminishing oral support”, together with a reappraisal of language teaching methodologies in terms of desired learning outcomes. However, his emphasis is more on those whose home language is Moroccan Arabic, and he gives minimal attention to the impact of such an approach on those whose L1 is Amazigh.

Yonas Mesfun Asfaha & Saleh Mahmud Idris's chapter on the language situation in Eritrea is both thorough and engaging and is a veritable gold-mine of insights into the complexities of implementation given a favourable language-in-education policy in which all nine of the country's languages (and all three scripts) are used in primary education, with strong governmental support. After concise sections on the historical background of multilingual education in the country and its languages and orthographies, the chapter highlights the disparity between the languages which use the alphasyllabic Geez script versus those that use the alphabetic Latin script, in terms of their social use and the availability of literacy materials outside the home and school. It also discusses the use and effectiveness of the different pedagogical methods, noting among other things, that a syllable-based teaching method in the early years achieved better learning outcomes than a phoneme-based method in languages with a relatively simple syllable structure. As for transferability, they also reported that English language literacy was predicted by English oral language proficiency and home language literacy, but not by script choice. The chapter nicely illustrates the reasons why even in a society with an egalitarian language policy and strong governmental support for curriculum development and teaching materials, there can still be several further barriers in the path of achieving the desired literacy outcomes.

Abebayehu Messele Mekonnen's chapter on literacy in Ethiopia is an important addition to the book, as Ethiopia is widely regarded as having one of the most progressive and widely-implemented language-in-education policies in Africa, like Eritrea but comprising a much more multilingual environment. The author reports that about half of the 80 or so languages are currently being used as the medium of instruction in primary schools, with variation across the eleven administrative regions as to whether this is for the first eight years or just the first four. Again, despite widespread public acceptance and reasonable political support, problems with implementation include orthography standardisation and transferability, poor teacher training, and a lack of textbooks and supplementary reading materials have meant that literacy levels are still very low. Some nice additions to the chapter include sections on the common phonological and grammatical features of Ethiopian languages and also a section on equality and inclusion in the classroom, noting how girls, and those with disabilities are often marginalised. The summary also mentions the need to add culturally relevant approaches to literacy to supplement the dominant, west-centric perspectives, although the author does not give details as to what such approaches might entail.

In Chapter 12, by Kaya Jasińska, Mary-Claire Ball & Sosthène Guei, the focus shifts to Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, looking firstly at Côte d'Ivoire, a country where 43% of the population is under 15, and the average number of children is 5.1 per woman. More than a third of school age children work in cocoa-production and consequently many do not attend school, further exacerbating the rural-urban imbalance in terms of literacy levels. The chapter highlights this imbalance in a number of ways
(e.g. quality of teacher training and teaching resources), and discusses a few recent initiatives to help address this, including implementing child-centered learning approaches and innovative web-based and mobile phone coaching platforms. Another notable feature of the Ivorian context is an official attempt to standardise the Latin script symbols for the sounds of Ivorian languages, which include no less than 16 separate vowel graphemes and the original use of punctuation marks to represent the vast array of syllabic tonal distinctions (up to 14 in the case of the Kru language Wobé).

The second Francophone chapter, by Béatrice Konfe Tiendrebeogo and JeDene Reeder, focuses on Burkina Faso, giving a succinct overview of the linguistic and orthographic features of Burkinabè languages, as well as an evaluation of both child and adult mother-tongue literacy programs. The vast majority of schools use French as the medium of instruction throughout, with only 5% of schools having ever been bilingual. With the country being in the Sahel region, one major factor disrupting children's education since 2016 has been the rise of various terrorist groups, which have often targeted school directors and teachers. One helpful insight from this chapter is that despite parental objections about the perceived lack of direct economic benefit of local language medium education, attitudes were generally more positive when programs incorporated cultural aspects into the curriculum, such as the community's values and heritage. Including income-generating activities into adult literacy programs also made them more attractive. Other problems mentioned included lack of pedagogical resources, a lack of consideration of the teacher's L1 in teacher placements, a lack of vocabulary-building in curriculum within the first two years, and classrooms having students from multiple language communities, which hinders those whose language is not being used as the medium of instruction.

Chapter 14, by Leila Schroeder & Mohammed Osman N window, on literacy in Ghana, provides a refreshing break from the approach of previous chapters, looking instead at how a carefully planned early grade reading curriculum and pedagogy has proved to be effective in increasing L1 literacy levels in eleven of Ghana's 73 languages. The first half of the chapter describes the current orthographic conventions for the eleven languages in question, noting the significant amounts of under-representation in each of them with respect to vowel and tonal contrasts. Most of the languages use 7 vowel graphemes to represent 9 vowel phonemes, and a few also leave nasal vowels unmarked. Grammatical tonal contrasts are marked more frequently than lexical tonal contrasts. The second half of the chapter focuses on how the teaching methodology for each language was adapted so as to maximally help learners overcome the respective orthographic shortcomings. The results show that carefully planned curricula and appropriate teacher training can achieve impressive increases in L1 literacy levels among early grade readers with just 30-45 minutes exposure to L1 textbooks each day over the first two years of school. Indeed, given the ubiquitous desire for international languages to be used as the main language of instruction (LOI) in schools, one wonders whether such an approach is perhaps more realistically implementable across the continent as a whole than aiming for multiple L1s to be the sole LOI throughout the first 4-6 years of schooling.

Chapter 15, by Natalie Louge, Fernando Gándara, Maik Gibson and Hali Thomas, focuses on a large-scale, 6-year, USAID-funded project which aimed at reviewing, developing and evaluating teaching and learning materials in the official language (French) and three national languages (Kiswahili, Lingala and Ciluba) for primary grades 1-4 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The chapter presents an overview of the project, general themes in its findings, and some reflective comments, but does not include detailed results. The project is to be commended for its depth and the rigour of its design, gathering numerous layers of data through interviews, classroom observations, sociolinguistic mapping, an evaluation of both reading and writing skills, meticulous data analysis, and a specially designed software tool. This tool was used to prepare teaching and learning materials that progressively introduced letters and words in a contextually-appropriate sequence that maximised learning outcomes. Among the main lessons to be learned from the project are the importance of collecting sociolinguistic mapping data early on, having stakeholder discussions about the differences between local and standard varieties of a language and the linguistic distances between L1 and L2, and the importance of building flexibility into language-in-education policies that permit different strategies in different regions and in urban vs rural contexts.
Chapter 16, by Brenda Aromu Wawire, gives a description of the language and literacy situation in Kenya, beginning with an overview of the county's linguistic profile and a history of its language-in-education policies. The current policy stipulates that the mother-tongue should be used as the language of instruction for grades 1-3 before English takes over from grade 4. The rest of the chapter describes the ubiquitous problems of implementing such a policy, along with some rather odd-fitting sections on the history of Kiswahili and its basic linguistic features. A few typos and grammatical errors make the discussion hard to follow in places, and the chapter would also have benefitted from a more in-depth analysis in many places, but it succeeds in giving the reader a general overview of the main problems faced by attempts to improve literacy levels in Kenya.

Chapter 17, by Amos Moses Chauma, is the first of seven chapters that look at literacy in southern Africa, beginning with Malawi. Unfortunately, this chapter mostly comprises a rather lengthy and repetitive complaint about the low levels of literacy in the country. It does not mention the language-in-education policy at all and is often unclear which language, whether English or Chichewa, the main indigenous language, is being discussed. The chapter is poorly organised, is riddled with sentences and phrases that either state the obvious, contradict other statements, or are rather unclear (e.g. the chapter title *Malawi Chichewa language: Handbook of literacy in Africa*), and generally gives the impression of a first draft in need of significant editing and development.

Chapter 18, by Sylvia Chanda Kalindi & Catherine McBride, is the first of three chapters looking at different aspects of literacy in Zambia, which might seem a little excessive for the volume, but is perhaps unsurprising given that they contain contributions from three out of the four editors. The first reports on the findings of an investigation into the nature and effectiveness of out-of-school literacy support given to grade 2 children by family and friends during a Bemba word-writing task, and mentions several ways in which the wider community can have a positive effect on children's literacy levels. The second Zambian chapter, by Bestern Kaani & R. Malatesha Joshi, gives a comprehensive review of the problems and successes of the various language-in-education policies in Zambia over the last century. The fact that Zambia has increased the number of years of local language instruction from 0 to 1 in 1998 and then to 4 in 2013 has shown how this has led to improved levels of literacy in Zambian languages. However, the lack of awareness of the different teaching methodologies required to handle the differences in orthographic transparency between Zambian languages and English has meant that increases in English literacy rates have been minimal.

The third of the Zambian chapters, by Jeongmin Lee, Nefertiti Puplampu, & Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowsh, is one of the highlights of the book for me as it discusses practical barriers to early grade literacy acquisition in Zambia and Mozambique at the classroom level rather than at the broader national level. For example, instead of simply bemoaning a lack of resources as a challenge, it discusses teacher attitudes and responses to the shortage of materials. In doing so, it challenges many Western assumptions about so-called "best practices" for creating conducive learning environments such as having posters on the walls and booklets and other materials available for students to use. The authors argue that these may help in some contexts, but may not be appropriate in all low and middle-income contexts of sub-Saharan Africa, and may even have a negative effect on learning outcomes. The chapter is well organised, clearly written, and rich in insights and should be required reading for anyone interested in language policy implementation in Africa.

Chapter 21, by Begani Ziambo Mashinja, looks at literacy in Namibia, outlining the by now familiar problems of implementing a mother-tongue language-in-education policy in primary schools. The author mentions the lack of standardisation of orthographies on Namibian languages, their complex phonemic inventories, the problem of multilingual classrooms, the difficulty in an abrupt transition to English-medium instruction in grade 4, and a lack of mother-tongue reading materials. The use of translanguaging practices in the classroom is also mentioned as a widespread and useful strategy, although the author does not differentiate it from code-switching, the advantages of which are more debatable.

The sixth southern African chapter, by Annah Molosiwa & Andy Chebanne, looks at language policy and pedagogical literacy practices in Botswana, a country with a tiny population (2.5 million)
relative to its size, where Setswana, spoken as an L1 or L2 by 90% of the population, and English have long dominated language use in primary schools. Recently however, the positive reaction to the use of all 26 indigenous languages for radio and television announcements during the COVID-19 pandemic helped to prompt the government to assign linguists to coordinate a fresh move to establish mother-tongue medium instruction in primary schools, including a national awareness-raising campaign on its benefits. In terms of pedagogical practices for teaching literacy skills, the chapter discusses how, in the early years of primary school, the “Breakthrough to Setswana” approach, which involves using materials designed around building on the child’s personal life experiences, has met with some success, but in later years, teachers tend to resort to more lecture-style teaching with much repetition of sounds and words with less focus on developing reading for understanding and pleasure. A recent study also found that in classrooms where the teacher did not speak the mother-tongue of the students, the use of teacher aides who were proficient in the student language also had a positive impact on learning outcomes.

The final southern African chapter, by Shuai Zhang, Juan Quinonez-Beltran, Jialin Lai, Pooja Nakamura, John Downes, Carlos Manual, and R. Malatesha Joshi, looks at the relationship between oral language proficiency and word reading skills in four languages in Mozambique. The conclusions are based on a statistical analysis of a large scale project involving over 3,000 children in primary grades 1-3 in more than 150 schools across three regions. Oral language proficiency was tested by counting how many words students produced in one minute when prompted by a picture of a contextually appropriate scene. Word reading skills were tested using 15 real and 15 invented words in each language. The results were then analysed with respect to a number of variables such as gender, L1, region, language of instruction, and urban/rural setting. Although making sense of parts of the chapter requires a relatively high level of familiarity with statistical methods, the authors do summarise the main findings quite well. In particular, they confirm other reports that, at least in languages with fairly phonemically transparent orthographies, students are able to transfer literacy skills in L1 to L2 and vice versa. The study also found that 90% of students could be classified as monolingual and that 73% of students spoke an L1 that did not match their school's language of instruction. Furthermore, L2 (Portuguese) literacy levels were generally higher in urban areas, leading the authors to suggest that any attempts to implement the official language of instruction policy should take this difference into account.

The final chapter, by Funke Omidire & Leanne Morgan, looks at the teaching of pre-reading skills, with a case study of one inner city school in South Africa. The first half serves as a concise overview of the key elements involved in the development of pre-reading skills, such as phonological awareness, oral language proficiency and print awareness. As several of the other chapters refer to these concepts, it might have been helpful to some readers to have had this chapter earlier on in the volume. The second half of the chapter reports on attitudes and strategies used by two grade 1 teachers in a low-fee, urban, private school in Pretoria. First-hand, classroom observations such as this often reveal very practical problems which many broad-level studies overlook, and this study is no exception. For example, in this case, the teachers' preference of an English-only strategy was reinforced by the fact that local language use often caused arguments between the students due to inoffensive words in one language being offensive in another. However, the discussion mainly just summarised the main findings and could have gone further in mentioning practical ways to tackle the root issues.

## CONCLUSION

Overall, this handbook is a valuable collection of papers highlighting the complexities of tackling the problem of improving basic literacy skills in the area that on a global scale arguably needs it most. The book shows how contexts vary enormously from country to country, and from state to state within each country, on top of the ever present urban/rural distinction. If anything, it highlights the need for national language policies to be much more specific in their guidelines, allowing for different
strategies to be used in different contexts. Publishing general language-in-education policies which follow tried and tested expert advice might help to satisfy international observers, but unless they address the specific issues that educators actually face in different contexts on a daily basis, more often than not, it simply leads to non-compliance. This book serves as a rich resource both for the generalist and the practitioner and is highly recommended for anyone interested in literacy in Africa. From a critical point of view, it could have been a bit more linguistically rigorous in places and some chapters could have done with a fair bit of tidying up in terms of organisation and basic editing. The absence of a chapter on Africa's most populous and linguistically diverse country, Nigeria, was also notable. Nevertheless, this volume is likely to serve as a milestone and key resource in the literature on literacy in Africa for many years to come, and is a welcome addition to any Africanist bookshelf for researchers, policy makers, linguists, teachers, literacy workers and orthography developers alike.

## References

Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2019. Comparative African linguistics. In H. Ekkehard Wolff (ed.), *The Cambridge handbook of African linguistics*, 139–165. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Greenberg, Joseph H. 1955. *Studies in African linguistic classification*. New Haven: Compass.