The question of language is intrinsically linked to the configuration and practice of power in Africa. African countries are designated as Anglophone, Arab, Francophone and Lusophone, which erroneously reduces the rich and diversified sociolinguistic reality of the continent. States such as Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Senegal, Mali and Tanzania cannot assume designations through their native languages, such as Creole, Amharic, Wolof, Bambara or Swahili, due to the risk of political and military conflicts.
To hold the positions of Prime Minister or President of the Republic in Africa, it has become a mandatory condition to master a colonial language, without any need to know any African language. This reality extends to the leaders of nationalist movements, such as Amílcar Cabral and Eduardo Mondlane, who advocated the use of Portuguese as an instrument of national unity to overcome ethnic-linguistic fragmentation. In Asia, the situation is distinct, as leaders who do not master the national or local language are prevented from exercising power.
Colonial regimes disseminated African languages through administrators, settlers and Catholic and Protestant missions with the strategic objective of making it impossible to constitute political protest movements. The defense of African languages during the colonial period was never an innocent matter, but rather an effective form of preservation of colonial power. This political model served as a forerunner of the linguistic policies of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, which promoted the political valorization of local languages to sustain segregation.
Currently, when African political regimes advocate the valorization of native languages, the main objective is to reinforce their political legitimacy and authority. However, the valorization of African languages must occur in a process of prior valorization of the subject who holds that language, under the risk of adopting the colonial practice and the logic of the Apartheid regime.
