Rwanda’s language duopoly crucial but attracts unnecessary stereotypes

The desire by Rwanda to create an economy where soft skills are the main product in the labour market has received recommendation from all observers of the country’s progress. The soft skills here can be divided into competence in information technology, awareness of modern trends in financial and commercial services and so on. In retrospect, these soft skills can be said to be the cornerstone of the service sector in the country. As a result, the service sector (even if it comes with the burden of creating a society mainly consisting of consumers), is the most important sector of the economy. The ambition has especially been driven through the communication sector; Rwanda has the unique feature among all regional economies of having two international languages used in the economy as official mediums of communication. It is only in Rwanda in East and Central Africa where both French and English are widely spoken among private and public corporate institutions with equal competence. This language duopoly has greatly served Rwanda. To emphasise Rwanda’s determination to progress on the language grid, the government is currently involved in multiple deals with leading computer software companies to develop programmes in Kinyarwanda. The language duopoly is an essential chapter in Rwanda’s current story. However, to an extent it has also created an uncomfortable coexistence among some people who are fluent in either English or French. This has led to the rise of the labels of Anglophone and Francophone. On the face of these two identities there are no problems but in certain circles in the country the labels determine socialisation characteristics among Rwandans. Nowhere is this phenomenon more prevalent than the National University of Rwanda in Butare. At the most important academic institution in the country students have clear cut pathways, hostels, restaurants, bars and corners where on any given day you will only find either Francophone or Anglophone. It is said by students here that in Anglophone corners Francophone students are not allowed to walk through after a given time of the day and the same goes for Anglophone students in Francophone corners. According to Professor Silas Lwakabamba these differences are normally tolerated but they get ugly during student election campaigns where the language issue is used as a crucial vote winning card. “In the past we had issues where students wrote abusive language in the toilets and their hostels against attacking either English or French speakers.” As a journalist in Rwanda, I have observed that among many of my sources the issue of Anglophone-Francophone is crucial as in many cases it can influence how much information one receives from newsmakers and that is the bottom line of this article. Just like Rwanda, here at the ICTR there’s duopoly of both languages. However, many of the potential sources of news are French speaking West Africans and as a result it is essential to speak French if you are to gather necessary information. While interviewing one such official last week he wondered at my poor attempt at French which caused a bit of an embarrassment. Having been in Arusha since the ICTR opened, the West African official could not master a single paragraph of Swahili, the main medium of communication in Tanzania. Rwanda will possibly achieve the status of a few chosen countries in the world like Switzerland where both international languages are spoken with ease and without stereotypes. Contact: donmuhinda@yahoo.com