Educational language policies in African multilingual contexts

The article discusses the role and importance of critical educational language policies to foster multilingual practices that work in favor of social justice in the African educational context, in general, and in Mozambique, in a specific way. In doing so, we explore the field of critical educational language policy, paying attention to the meanings of language and the role of language ideologies circulating in educational discourses and practices in multilingual African contexts. We present and defend a broad, critical, and contextualized understanding of multilingualism allied to the notion of "linguistic citizenship," bearing in mind the importance of a situated perspective of language practices and language ideologies. Our discussion aims at: (i) validating and recognizing the agentive, creative, and participatory linguistic acts of multilingual subjects in the African context; (ii) recognizing and validating language epistemologies based on the African multilingual experience.