Editor, RE: “Why Rwanda’s move to English?” (The New Times, November 11). Rwanda’s policy choices, including what languages should feature in our school syllabi, must always be informed by considered analysis of the gains and potential costs of available options rather than emotive sentiment. Our shared mother tongue is Kinyarwanda, not French or English. Decisions on whether we continue to promote these latter should be based entirely on what benefits we think they offer the Rwandan labour force of tomorrow. And on that measure, French is rapidly losing ground. It would be much better to shift to Mandarin or even Spanish from French as the second foreign language for priority teaching as these offer greater opportunities to the markets and sources of investments of tomorrow. Our choices should always be driven by coldly calculated self-interest, never by subjective sentimentality. MK
