President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has urged the people of East Africa and Africa at large to use their similarities and promote Swahili as a powerful tool for economic integration and unifying the continent.
According to the President, having many tribes and clans that are similar is a blessing, and the factor can be used to make Swahili a powerful language.
The President made the remarks on Thursday, 24th October 2024, while speaking at the inaugural graduation ceremony for the 1st intake of the Kiswahili students at Kyambogo University playgrounds, where a total of 304 cadres graduated after completing a one-year study-free course at the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Secretariat.
“And we can now use it as a core to build a very powerful international language by putting in more words from the tribes and the languages here in the hinterland because the tribal languages here have got a lot of vocabularies,” President Museveni said, adding that himself, he has introduced many words like Emyooga, which means skills such as carpentry, pottery, and tailoring, among others.
The President also congratulated the graduates upon finishing the Kiswahili course, which he said is good to facilitate communication within East African nations. He described Swahili as a neutral, non-ethnic, and uniting language that started at the coast of East Africa as a tool for doing business and that it belongs to no single tribe.
“What you have done is a very good thing, and I thank the people who brought that idea, the NRM Secretary General Richard Todwong and Rt Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, for pushing this. We are going to push the program further,” H.E. Museveni assured the cadres, whom he encouraged to perfect the vocabularies and the tenses before they are deployed as teachers countrywide.
President Museveni further contributed Shs100 million to their SACCO.
The First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of East African Community Affairs, Rt Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, appreciated President Museveni for supporting the Kiswahili program.
“When I went to parliament to report that the cabinet had decided that we start teaching Kiswahili in Uganda, there was a mistaken view that we were going to stop Ugandans from speaking their languages and take on Swahili. But today, this activity has described that these people are speaking their languages, English and Swahili, and they will soon learn French,” Rt. Hon. Kadaga said.
She also thanked Kyambogo University for hosting the event and the UMCAT School of Journalism and Mass Communication for partnering with them.
The NRM Secretary General, Rt Hon. Richard Todwong, explained the genesis of the program, which he said started as a conversation and is now yielding huge results. He thanked the Ministry of East African Community Affairs for supporting the initiative.
“I have received phone calls from colleagues in the region, and they’re congratulating Uganda for running this program,” Rt. Hon. Todwong said, calling for more support towards the teaching of Kiswahili given the current high demand for the language in the country and the region.
“There’s a lot of demand in the country for Kiswahili lessons. One of the reasons is that our citizens are finding challenges when they look for jobs in the region. Some of them are failing to get these jobs because they lack the Kiswahili language. We feel with this empowerment, we might be able to compete ably with the rest of the region,” Rt. Hon. Todwong stated.
The Vice Chancellor of Kyambogo University, Prof. Elly Katunguka, thanked President Museveni for their continuous support of the university and called for more government support to construct a boundary wall around the university to enhance security.
The National Coordinator for the Kiswahili program, Mr. Stephen Bwire, informed the President that out of the 304 students, they are going to select 150 cadres who will be trained further for another 12 months (one year) so that they can be sent to districts and communities to teach other Ugandans.
“The idea behind this is that in the next 10 years, we want at least 50% of the population in Uganda to be speaking Swahili, and right now this is a critical mass and we want to thank you so much for your support,” Mr. Bwire said.
Mr. Charles Ogwel, founder of UMCAT School of Journalism and Mass Communication, whose institution was the lead trainer of the Kiswahili course, expressed gratitude to President Museveni for his tireless effort to support the learning and teaching of the Kiswahili language in Uganda and for standing firm on the agenda of the East African integration, for which Swahili is an important factor in the process.
“Your Excellency, you have pushed this agenda for several years, and indeed your aspirations have come true, and now as a nation, we can say we have a national language that every Ugandan should speak. Your presence here demonstrates that support, and we are more confident than before that Kiswahili, in a very few years, will be a widely spoken language in Uganda. We, as the UMCAT School of Journalism and Mass Communication, are very proud to be part of this process,” Mr. Ogwel said.
The Chief National Instructor of the Kiswahili Language, Mr. Rodgers Ndawula, who also addressed the event, thanked President Museveni for accepting to endorse the program to ensure Uganda is not left behind as far as Kiswahili is concerned.
Swahili has over 200 million speakers and is one of the three official languages of the EAC member states: Kenya, DR Congo, the Federal Republic of Somalia, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania.
The event was also attended by officials from the NRM secretariat, national leaders, Kiswahili instructors, among others.