According to Alexei Maslow, director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies, the languages, including Swahili and Amharic, which are commonly spoken in East Africa, and Yoruba, which is spoken in Nigeria and neighboring countries, will from September 2023 be taught in four schools that have yet to were not published. , Lomonosov Moscow State University.
African languages ​​will be taught as part of a special IAAS-MSU program and is intended to help establish closer ties with the continent, Russian news agency Sputnik reported last week.
The announcement, made during the Sputnik International Round Table on Russia-Africa Relations, focused on “prospects for economic cooperation”, attended by academics from universities in both places.
This caused excitement in some circles in both Russia and Africa, with the Russian Embassy in Uganda happily tweeting news. “Starting this September, students from four Moscow schools will begin learning African languages ​​- Swahili, Amharic and Yoruba,” the company announced.
When the move is updated, Russia will reportedly become the first European country to teach an African language in its public schools.
“The sudden turn to Africa requires a completely different type of specialists who could work directly with the economy and with modern political and economic elites, and most importantly, they would realize that Africa is not just one big continent, but in fact it is a mosaic of different national , ethnic, religious and linguistic traditions,” Maslov said about the event.
“A sudden turn to Africa requires a completely different type of specialist”
Swahili, also known as Kiswahili, is one of the most widely spoken languages ​​in Africa and is commonly spoken in the East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 200 million people speak this language. It is an official language in Kenya and Tanzania, and the African Union has also made it an official lingua franca.
On the other hand, Yoruba is mainly spoken in the West African countries of Nigeria, Benin and Togo, where it is spoken by over 50 million. Amharic is spoken by more than 50 million people in the Horn of Africa countries of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
About 30,000 African students study at Russian universities, and more than 100,000 of them have expressed interest in studying there, according to the Study in Russia organization, Racus. The country has stepped up recruitment campaigns in recent years, using affordability and quality as selling points.
