Opinion

Swahili: The Rise Of An African World Language

Published

1 year ago

July 7, 2025

Jonas Jeovita

Swahili African world language has grown from coastal roots into a Pan-African voice through trade, policy, media, and youth culture across the continent

In 1995, I won a scholarship to study Swahili at the Institute of Swahili and Foreign Languages in Zanzibar, Tanzania.

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I had crammed for two months before the qualifying exam, trying to catch up with African Studies students who had been studying Swahili for two years.

I couldn’t utter a single coherent sentence, but I knew all the nominal classes and verbal extensions by heart.

It got me through.

I stayed with the family of Bi Faiza in Michenzani, Zanzibar, a household consisting of Bi Faiza and her three daughters. She welcomed me as her son, and so, my journey of learning began.

I was captivated by Swahili’s elegant structure: nouns that agree with verbs according to semantic class and number as in m-zee a-me-anguka chini ‘the old man has fallen down’ vs m-ti u-me-anguka chini ‘the tree has fallen down’; the many ways to create new words through regular patterns as in kuandika ‘write’, kuandikia ‘write to someone’, kuandikisha ‘make somebody write’, kuandikwa ‘be written’, kuandikiana ‘write to each other’, mwandishi ‘writer’, maandishi ‘text’, mwandiko ‘handwriting’; the readily available technical vocabulary, including in my field of linguistics. I was fascinated by its rich literature and oraliture, and by the vibrant intellectual and academic life surrounding the language.

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Zanzibar: course in Swahili.
Swahili was strikingly different from Ewe, my Ghanaian heritage language, which favours short, single words, has a tone system, and complex ways of forming words from smaller ones that pop up in unexpected places.

I understood why standardized Swahili is so popular among European, learners. In aspects like word formation, diction and written expression, it bore a striking resemblance with the European standard languages I spoke.

Zanzibar Swahili, or Kiunguja, is considered the most prestigious of the East Coast varieties, and is the basis of Kiswahili Sanifu ‘Standard Swahili’.

Colonial administrations, looking for efficient ways to rule and exploit diverse populations, picked and promoted certain African languages over others, speeding up their spread.

European colonial linguists and missionaries engineered standardized Swahili, while crucial African contributions were written out of history.

Hierarchies of prestige and “correctness” have therefore emerged, mirroring power dynamics found in European languages.

Many Kenyans, for instance, think that the urban dialects they speak are “bad Swahili” compared to the coastal ones closer to the standard.

With time, I learnt to love the incredible diversity of Swahili, ranging from the bookish variety I’d learned to the ones spoken in Nairobi, the streets of Dar es Salaam, and Kampala.

At a conference in Gran Canaria, I got to know a Brother from Lubumbashi and discovered new possibilities.

His Swahili was tonal, not stress-based. It had noun classes and auxiliaries that I hadn’t heard before, lots of French words, and a sprinkling of Lingala.

This was still recognizably Swahili, yet beautifully different from the standardized dialect that I had learnt.

Swahili as an African world language
Swahili has a long documented history.

Linguists estimate that it emerged around the 7th century as a distinct variety among the Bantu languages of the littoral zone of Kenya, developing within the maritime culture of the coastal peoples of the region.

It is closely related to the Mijikenda languages of Kenya, and the languages of the Comoro Islands.

Over the next two to three hundred years, the enterprising, mercantile, and maritime Swahili forged a common identity and carried their language all the way down the coast into northern Mozambique.

Swahili explorers, merchants, sailors, fisherfolk, and farmers founded settlements along the coast and acculturated resident populations into their cosmopolitan culture characterized by city-states and the gradual adoption of Islam, thus integrating the Swahili into the Indian Ocean world uniting East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia.

Historical records indicate the presence of Swahili ships in Cambay, India, and Malacca, Malaysia, in the 16th century.

Swahili city-states served as entrepôts for trade with central African states like Mutapa in present-day Zimbabwe.

Like shrewd capitalists everywhere in the world, Swahili merchants reaped handsome profits from their position as intermediaries.

Much of this wealth was pumped into the arts, poetry, literature in Ajami, fashion, imported luxury goods from China and India, and the beautification of cities.

In the course of these developments, Swahili became an international language of trade, stretching all along the east coast of Africa into the southern parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

Conversely, relations with Arabs, Indians, Chinese, and Malagasy merchants provided an infusion of new vocabulary and cultural elements.

This is evident in words like duka ‘shop’ from Hindi and Arabic-sourced numerals like sita ‘six’, saba ‘seven’, and tisa ‘nine’.

Malagasy influence has been posited for nautical terms like sambo ‘ship’, shapa ‘raft’, utari ‘(ship) rope’.

Swahili architecture, cuisine, and dress integrate East African, southern Arabic, and Indian styles to a beautiful, balanced whole.

Swahili is an emblem of African modernity and Pan-African aspirations. It serves as a genuine medium of self-expression and identity for the peoples of East and Central Africa – and it feeds the mouth that speaks it.

This golden age was brutally interrupted when the Portuguese entered the Indian Ocean, destroying the delicate balance of trading interests among the Indian Ocean peoples.

After sailing around the southern tip of Africa in 1497, the Portuguese mass murderer Vasco da Gama bombarded the Swahili cities he came upon for Portugal’s colonial project: seizing Indian Ocean trade for themselves.

The Portuguese had no sophisticated trade goods to offer, and hence the only way to insert themselves into this network was through brute force.

This ushered in the slow decline of the Swahili states, with a gradual takeover by the Portuguese, and later, the Omani Arabs, who both intensified human enslavement and elephant slaughter in the region, both heavily funded by Indian merchants.

With the colonial invasions and exactions of the British, Germans, and Belgians, violence, genocide and exploitation of Africans were driven to new heights, causing immense human suffering in the 19th and 20th centuries.

These developments also spread Swahili far inland up to eastern Congo as populations rushed to speak it in order to survive, trade, and acquire it as an emblem of power.

Swahili culture, with its openness and cosmopolitanism, overcame its chequered past and rose to become an important reference point in the nation-building ideologies of present-day Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Swahili as a Successful Example of Language Policy
The post-independence trajectories of Swahili in Kenya and Tanzania represent contrasting approaches and offer insights into the politics of language.

Tanzania under Mwalimu Julius Nyerere adopted Swahili as an official language alongside English, implementing it systematically across education, government, and public life.

Swahili is an emblem of African modernity and Pan-African aspirations. It serves as a genuine medium of self-expression and identity for the peoples of East and Central Africa – and it feeds the mouth that speaks it.

This policy was rooted in Nyerere’s socialist philosophy of ujamaa ‘familyhood’, and aimed to create national unity by rejecting colonial linguistic hierarchies.

The results were remarkable: Tanzania boasts high literacy rates and Swahili serves as a genuine lingua franca across regional, class, and ethnic lines. The language has become deeply embedded in national identity.

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Major locations in Africa where Zwahili is spoken.
Kenya, by contrast, maintained English as the official language while recognizing Swahili as a national language.

Although Swahili is widely spoken, particularly in urban areas and along the coast, English kept its key role in education, administration, and the formal economy.

This created a more complex linguistic hierarchy with English at the top, Swahili in the middle, and other major Kenyan languages like Gikuyu and Kalenjin occupying the lower rungs.

With increasing distance from the colonial era, young urban Kenyans have, however, been rooting for Swahili in their everyday interactions.

In the process, they have created versatile Swahili-based youth languages like Sheng, which mix-in English and words from other Kenyan languages.

The success of Swahili in East and Central Africa has inspired its adoption as the only African language among the six working languages of the African Union.

Swahili has become a bulwark against neocolonial language policies that promote English and French to the detriment of African languages.

Ultimately, the success of Swahili owes a lot to administrative intervention, but it would be wrong to say it has come only from top-down enforcement.

Much of its growth happened because ordinary people adopted it and made connections with each other, even when this was helped along by nation-building efforts.

Today, Swahili’s expansion is increasingly driven by digital and social media, popular culture, music, and film, which has spread the language across borders through its appeal and utility.

Swahili in the Media, Pop Culture, and Youth Culture
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Music by Taarab band, sung in Swahili. Photo: Nicholas Calvin.
In the past two decades or so, Swahili has undergone a remarkable transformation.

Pop music sung in Swahili exploded onto the scene of East and Central Africa in the wake of Tanzania’s and Kenya’s independence in the 1960s.

The digital distribution of music has exponentially increased the possibilities by offering informal, peer-to-peer forms of distribution of content.

Like in West Africa, new musical genres have emerged in East Africa that combine Congolese rumba and Taarab-influenced genres with hip-hop and R’n’B, ushering in a style called Bongo Flava.

Swahili is also the main medium of the vibrant Kenyan and Tanzania movie sector, conquering new audiences that English cannot reach.

Young users are expanding the vocabulary and structure of Swahili, mixing languages creatively, using Swahili for humour, social commentary, and the arts.

A new generation of Swahili writers is experimenting with form and content, rejuvenating and transforming traditional narrative techniques.

The Future of Swahili
It is difficult to determine the exact number of speakers today, but estimates suggest that up to 200 million people use Swahili as a first or additional language.

Swahili will certainly continue to expand, absorbing smaller African languages and growing organically through demographic trends and urbanization.

By 2100, population projections for Kenya, Tanzania, and eastern DRC indicate a combined total of at least 400 million people.

It is likely that all of them will speak Swahili as part of their linguistic repertoire. Additionally, Swahili is gaining ground in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and parts of Somalia, Mozambique, South Sudan, Malawi, and Zambia.

Due to these trends, Swahili is probably the fastest-growing world language besides West African Pidgin, and both languages are set to figure among the largest of the globe by 2100.

The question remains whether Swahili’s growth will remain mostly informal, supported only modestly by state policies.

There is a risk that a divide will deepen, with English, French, and Portuguese dominating elite education while Swahili-medium education is relegated to the lower middle class and working masses.

This could further fragment societies already weakened by economic hardship and neocolonial resource extraction.

Moreover, the digital language divide may widen as English continues to dominate global technology, economics, and culture, reinforcing the hegemony of its speakers in the Global North.

Regardless of what governments do or fail to do, the grassroots appeal of Swahili will continue to grow. It is an emblem of African modernity and Pan-African aspirations.

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It serves as a genuine medium of self-expression and identity for the peoples of East and Central Africa –and it feeds the mouth that speaks it.

By Kofi Yakpo

Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong.

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Opinion

Beware of 2027 election false prophets and political delusion

Published

23 hours ago

August 25, 2026

Mariam Balogun

Why the Opposition May Lose Again – Not Because President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Is Unbeatable, but Because His Opponents Are Unprepared

By Nosa Osaikhuiwu,

There is a dangerous political delusion taking hold in Nigeria ahead of the 2027 presidential election: the belief that because millions of Nigerians are unhappy with the government, the opposition will automatically defeat President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Also read: APC Reaffirms Yayi Amid Ogun Ticket Dispute

That assumption could prove to be one of the opposition’s biggest mistakes. There is another narrative that has become almost unquestionable in some political circles: that the opposition actually won the 2023 presidential election and that its victory was stolen.

I do not subscribe to that narrative, because the conclusions are baseless without empirical data, unsubstantiated and unfounded.

Let me state my position clearly. I am not an APC supporter, nor am I a supporter of any political party in Nigeria. My position is based on political realities and my commitment to good governance, culture change, ethical transformation and a better Nigeria.

I believe Nigerians must learn to distinguish between what we wish had happened and what actually happened. Because as the saying goes “if wishes were horses baggers will ride all day”.

THE 2023 ELECTION: POLITICAL MATHEMATICS MATTERED

The 2023 presidential election was fundamentally different from the elections that preceded it because Nigeria’s traditional two-party political contest was disrupted by the emergence of Peter Obi and the Labor Party as a major electoral force.

Before Peter Obi left the PDP, the presidential contest was largely expected to be between the PDP and APC. Then the equation changed.

Peter Obi left the PDP and joined the Labor Party. His candidacy captured the imagination of millions of Nigerians, particularly young people and voters who wanted a fundamental change in the political system.

But there was an important consequence that many people appear unwilling to acknowledge: The opposition vote was divided.

A substantial portion of the electorate that might otherwise have supported the PDP moved toward Labor. This move was a game changer for the political and electoral landscape.

It transformed what could have been essentially a two-way contest into a three-way presidential election. This was not a minor development. It changed the mathematical calculus of the election.

The APC entered the election as the incumbent governing party, with the enormous political advantages that come with incumbency and an established national political structure.

The PDP had its own extensive national structure, but it was weakened by internal divisions and the emergence of the Labor Party.

The Labor Party, meanwhile, generated enormous enthusiasm but did not possess the national political structure of either the APC or PDP.

The electoral outcome was predictable from a political-mathematical standpoint. The opposition was divided. The APC was sufficiently consolidated. Consequently, the APC won.

That conclusion does not require anyone to be an APC supporter. It requires only an honest examination of the political circumstances surrounding the election.

WAS THE 2023 ELECTION PERFECT?

An unbiased and responsible review of the 2023 presidential elections will acknowledge that it was not perfect. Frankly, there are no perfect elections anywhere in the world.

There were controversies, alleged irregularities and unverified claims of record manipulation during the election.

But we must distinguish between two different arguments. The first is that the election contained irregularities. The second is that those irregularities were sufficient to change the final outcome.

The first proposition is not particularly controversial. The second requires credible evidence to substantiate the claims made.

An election does not become automatically invalid simply because irregularities occurred. Elections around the world experience administrative failures, logistical problems, disputes, allegations of malpractice and other imperfections.

The relevant question is whether those problems were sufficient to change the outcome. That is where political argument must give way to evidence.

The more important lesson from 2023, therefore, is not that somebody “stole” an election that was already won.

The more important lesson is that a divided opposition made it easier for the incumbent party to win. And that lesson is extremely relevant to 2027.

TINUBU’S BIGGEST ADVANTAGE MAY BE THE OPPOSITION

Let us be brutally honest. President Tinubu’s administration has significant economic and political challenges. Inflation, rising cost of living, unemployment, insecurity, hardship and declining purchasing power have created genuine pain for millions of Nigerians.

The government’s economic reforms may have been motivated by legitimate concerns about the sustainability of Nigeria’s economy.

But good intentions do not exempt a government from performance evaluation. Government must ultimately be judged by results.

If Nigerians were voting exclusively on economic performance, the APC would have plenty to worry about.

But elections are not mathematics based solely on economic indicators. They are political contests. And politics is about organization, structure, messaging, coalition-building, voter mobilization and the ability to convert public sentiment into votes. This is where the opposition is making a potentially catastrophic mistake.

The opposition appears to believe that dissatisfaction with Tinubu is equivalent to support for the opposition.

It is not. Millions of Nigerians can be unhappy with the APC and still refuse to vote for an opposition party. Millions can complain about the economy and still have no confidence in the alternative. Millions can criticize Tinubu and still ask:

“Who exactly are you bringing to replace him?”

That is the question the opposition has yet to answer convincingly.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT THE BALLOT BOX

One of the greatest political illusions of modern Nigeria is the belief that social-media popularity represents electoral strength. It does not. A politician can dominate Facebook, X, Tik-Tok or YouTube and still lose an election. Why? Because elections are not won by likes, reposts, hashtags, viral videos, but are won by voters going to the polls and making choices known.

They are won by organizing voters geographically from ward level, communities to their polling units by having a ground game that actively engages local leaders, traditional institutions, religious institutions, professional associations, youth organizations and community networks to ensure they deliver their votes. The party that understands this reality will have an enormous advantage.

The opposition cannot spend the next year fighting political battles on the internet while the APC builds and maintains political structures across the country.

The internet can amplify a political movement. It cannot substitute for a political organization.

THREE THINGS THE OPPOSITION MUST DO

If the opposition genuinely wants to defeat the APC in 2027, it must act now.

CONSOLIDATE

The opposition parties need to stop pretending that each one can independently defeat the APC. PDP, Labor, ADC and other opposition forces must seriously consider forming a genuine political coalition or adopting a common platform.

The objective cannot simply be “anything but Tinubu.”

That is not enough. Nigeria needs an alternative government, not merely an anti-Tinubu movement.

The coalition must develop a credible economic, security, educational, industrial and governance agenda. It must tell Nigerians exactly what it intends to do differently.

PRESENT ONE CANDIDATE

This may be the most important issue of all. The opposition cannot repeat 2023. If multiple opposition candidates enter the presidential race and divide the anti-APC vote again, they may once again hand the election to the incumbent.

One presidential candidate.

One national platform.

One coherent message.

One campaign structure.

One political strategy.

That is the only realistic pathway toward transforming widespread dissatisfaction into an electoral majority.

The process of choosing that candidate must not become another ethnic or regional contest. Nigeria needs a candidate who can build a national coalition.

A candidate who can win in the North.

A candidate who can win in the South.

A candidate who can appeal to Christians and Muslims.

A candidate who can appeal to young and old.

A candidate who can convince Nigerians that the alternative government will be competent, ethical and capable.

TAKE THE CAMPAIGN TO THE STREETS

The opposition must get off the internet.

Go to the communities.

Go to the wards.

Go to the villages.

Go to the markets.

Go to the universities.

Go to the workplaces.

Talk to farmers.

Talk to traders.

Talk to artisans.

Talk to young people.

Talk to women.

Talk to professionals.

Talk to people who have never posted a political message on social media.

Most importantly, listen to them. A political party cannot build a national movement by speaking only to people who already agree with it. It must persuade people who are undecided. That is how elections are won.

STOP BLAMING THE REFEREE

There is a deeper cultural problem that Nigeria must confront.

We have developed an extraordinary culture of avoiding responsibility. A student fails an examination and blames the teacher.

A football team loses and blames the referee.

A driver causes an accident and blames the devil.

A politician loses an election and immediately claims that the election was stolen.

Sometimes those accusations are justified.

But not always.

Sometimes we simply failed.

Sometimes we were not prepared.

Sometimes our opponent was better organized.

Sometimes our strategy was poor.

Sometimes our candidate was not popular enough.

Sometimes we did not have enough votes.

There is nothing undignified about acknowledging defeat.

In fact, the ability to honestly analyze failure is one of the foundations of ethical leadership.

Nigeria cannot build a culture of accountability while politicians refuse to accept responsibility for their own strategic failures.

If the opposition loses in 2027, it should not automatically blame INEC, the APC, the judiciary, technology, vote buying or electoral manipulation.

It should first ask:

Did we do everything necessary to win?

Did we have the structure?

Did we mobilize the voters?

Did we have one candidate?

Did we have a credible message?

Did we build a national coalition?

Did we protect our votes?

Did we understand the political terrain?

Did we actually convince undecided voters?

If the answer to these questions is no, then perhaps the problem was not simply the election.

Perhaps the problem was the opposition.

2027 IS NOT YET A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

Let me be clear: I am not predicting that President Tinubu will certainly win the 2027 election.

No responsible political analyst should make that claim at this stage.

Elections can change dramatically.

Political alliances can collapse.

New movements can emerge.

Economic conditions can change.

A powerful opposition coalition can alter the entire political equation.

But based on the political structure that exists today, the APC has a significant advantage.

And if the opposition continues to operate as it did in 2023, fragmented, internally divided and without a single national candidate, it could lose again.

Not necessarily because Tinubu’s government has performed exceptionally well. Not necessarily because Nigerians are satisfied.

But because the alternative has failed to organize itself sufficiently to take power. That is the uncomfortable truth many opposition politicians and the supporters do not want to hear.

THE FALSE PROPHETS ARE COMING

As 2027 approaches, Nigerians should expect a flood of political predictions. Some will tell you that the opposition has already won. Some will tell you that a particular candidate is “unstoppable.”

Those in the faith arena proclaim from the roof top that God has revealed the winner to them and that a candidate in the opposition rank or the incumbent president is the one chosen by God.

Others will interpret social-media trends as evidence of an inevitable electoral victory.

Some will publish elaborate electoral maps based on nothing more than wishful thinking. Many will blame every political setback on conspiracy.

Nigerians must be careful.

Political prophecy is not political strategy.

A viral video is not an election.

A poll is not an election.

A political rally is not an election.

A crowd is not an election.

An angry population is not automatically an opposition electorate.

The only thing that ultimately matters is whether a political organization can convert public sentiment into votes.

NIGERIA NEEDS A COMPETENT OPPOSITION

I want the opposition to compete, not because I support any particular political party, but because democracy requires a credible alternative.

A healthy democracy needs a government that knows it can be challenged.

It needs an opposition that can scrutinize government policies.

It needs political parties that can present alternative economic policies.

It needs leaders who can accept responsibility.

It needs citizens who can distinguish facts from political propaganda.

Most importantly, Nigeria needs a political culture in which elections are contests of ideas, competence and character rather than ethnic calculations, religious mobilization and personality cults.

The opposition still has time.

But it must wake up.

Stop fighting one another.

Stop living on social media.

Stop waiting for the APC to collapse.

Stop assuming economic hardship automatically translates into opposition votes.

Stop telling Nigerians that you already won an election you did not win.

Stop blaming everyone else.

Organize. Consolidate. Choose one candidate. Build a national coalition. Develop a credible alternative agenda. Go to the grassroots. Mobilize voters. Protect the votes.

Then compete.

If the opposition does that and still loses, it will at least have earned the right to demand a serious examination of the electoral process.

But if it refuses to do the work and loses again, Nigerians should not be surprised.

Also read: APC Reaffirms Yayi Amid Ogun Ticket Dispute

The APC may win, not because it is unbeatable, but because its opponents were unwilling or unable to become a credible alternative. That would be the greatest tragedy of all. Because Nigeria does not merely need a new government.

Nigeria needs a better political culture.

And that culture change must begin with accepting one simple principle:

If you want to win, prepare to win.

Anything less is political delusion.