There are functional reasons for maintaining two or more languages. West Africa has another set of conditions starting with national borders that reflect colonial treaties but not cultural and linguistic realities. Many dialects of many languages are found in each country superimposed by English, French, or Portuguese and a form of West African Pidgin. The countries inherit a colonial educational system with instruction and literacy largely in the colonial language. Education is essential but disproportionately expensive compared to developed nations.
Schools are too few and often minimal.
Written representation of many tribal languages exists, thanks to missionary linguists, but little written material exists in any of these indigenous languages. Focusing literacy education on English or French means closing off opportunity to a majority who speak neither. But literacy in each native language would be expensive, hard to achieve, and some would argue divisive. Selecting a single African language for education and literacy is possible but may be politically less acceptable than the choice of the colonial language in some African nations. These modern realities serve to highlight the key considerations that are involved in developing literacy in multilingual countries.