Overall, the diversity of languages and voices spoken in the Sahara requires sensitivity and openness. Languages, as carriers of culture and knowledge, move in all possible directions across the continent. In which language or languages can the many African nations communicate with each other? Colonial languages continue to dominate. But what happens today to the former colonial language when it is localized, internalized, and reappropriated? 

Fifty years after Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o denounced the use of English as one of the main languages for literature on the African continent in “Decolonizing the Mind” (1986), writers and translators in Africa and the African diaspora continue to debate the ownership rights to local and postcolonial languages. Today, the market, readers, and translatability are also important arguments in this debate. 

With: Yarri Kamara & Edwige Dro – Moderation: Kateryna Botanova