ABSTRACT
A survey of the use of African languages in education in most African countries south of the Sahara is bound to present a dismal picture. In a majority of the countries, notably the French-speaking countries and some English-speaking ones such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, the mother-tongue is not used at all in the formal school system. It is taught as a subject up to secondary school in a few countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. It is used as a medium of instruction in the lower classes of the primary school in some countries, and its use as a medium of instruction for the entire primary education has been reported only in Tanzania, Somalia and in the Six-Year Primary Project in Ifẹ, Nigeria. 1 It is perhaps only in adult literacy that there seems to be a wide acceptance of the inevitability of using African languages in education; but even here, with a few exceptions such as Mali, the amount of investment is so meagre that the actual results are not very encouraging.
