Alternative contexts of language policy and planning in sub-Saharan Africa

My main contention in this article is that the nation-state paradigm for policies targeted at effecting development in sub-Saharan Africa is undermined by arbitrary colonial boundaries and porous borders and the challenges of transnationalism as part of the globalization phenomenon in late modernity. The nation-state paradigm is also the framework for guaranteed dominance of English and French, the two main excolonial official languages of sub-Saharan Africa, because the indigenous languages, at least theoretically, operate within ethnic boundaries. I cite evidence of internal migration and displacement across national boundaries to argue that policies which are coterminous with these boundaries motivate people to move. I suggest that the treatment of boundaries as zones of continuity rather than discontinuity will allow for the development of stronger interstate agencies within which framework projects may be better managed. I present evidence of the difficulty in pushing macro-language policy and planning and make a case for micro-language policy and planning not only as a more viable alternative in the region but also one for which success is easier to measure.