Veritable bi-lingual tools for intra-Africa Business

English-French Companion for ECOWAS and AfCFTA Business Travelers and French Companion for African Economic Community are two books, or more appropriately, language communication manuals because of the immediate functionality, written by Dr. Dare Arokoyo, until recently associate professor and provost of the School of Continuing Education at the Houndegbe North American University in Benin Republic.

Both books are purpose-conceived and purpose-designed to enable English-speaking Africans communicate reasonably well in French with fellow Africans in the course of normal day-to-day interaction and more especially in the conduct of economic business. With this in view, they are written with ‘simplicity and a conversational approach’. Indeed, says Dare, ‘you don’t even have to have a background knowledge in French to use conveniently, (these manuals).

English-French Companion for ECOWAS is a 272- page work that guides the user on basics such as greeting, and self-introduction, through asking direction, request for service of all sorts, describing people and things, interaction with border officials and hotel staff, and importantly for the professional and the business person, marketing of products and services. It also ends with a 54-page ‘Bilingual Glossary of Business Terms’ arranged in alphabetical order.

AfCFTA Business Travelers and French Companion for African Economic Community runs into 322 pages that, besides its specific concern as a bilingual guide, gives copious introduction to, and justification for, an urgently needed functional platform for continental trade. It too offers the user a 40-page ‘Bilingual Glossary of Business Terms’.

It is important to point out quickly that Dr. Arokoyo’s main concern, and for good reason, is to write manuals that facilitate the lingual side of the ‘ease of doing business’ between and among African countries. As an excellent speaker and writer of both English and French, he appreciates, on the one hand, the unarguable usefulness –and benefits of bilingualism within and outside Africa, and on the other, the unquantifiable limitation that non-bilingualism imposes upon a traveler (for whatever purpose) around the continent.

Language is the oil to the communication process; multilingualism is the oil that eases the interaction of people across borders and cultures. Especially for the purpose of the highly desirable, much sought after, but so far elusive economic integration of Africa, the author is of the opinion, rightly, that it is imperative to strengthen bilingualism.
 
French is estimated to be spoken by 141 million in 34 countries of Africa and English by 130 million in 25 countries. Both are also widely used languages of political and business discourses across the globe, two of the most used languages on the Internet, and two of the working languages of international organisations.

Given the ‘political and economic strengths’ of French and English, the serious African entrepreneur who seeks to operate and thrive across borders needs to be bilingual. But so too can a bilingual African political actor be at a better advantage to communicate (in the fullest meaning of the word) with most of his colleagues across the continent.

Dr. Arokoyo argues, rightly, that ‘political and economic actors [armed] with bilingual communication capacity [are vastly better equipped] to engage in inter-lingual territorial mobility for export promotion, services…’.

Africa’s economic integration for the purpose of continental development has been in consideration since the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. It is a goal central to the formation of subsequent continental bodies – Lagos Plan of Action for Economic Development (1980-2000), African Economic Community (1991) and lately, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) (2002). Regional bodies such as the 15-member states Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) (1975) have, over time and for a similar goal, also been established across Africa.

It needs be recalled that as far back as 1963, the then OAU approved a policy of English- French bilingualism for the educational systems of African countries. This was meant to bridge intra- continent communication gap pending a time that the continent would agree on a lingua franca from the 1200 or so ‘mutually unintelligible languages spoken in Africa. To date, the continent of 54 sovereign states are unable – or unwilling – to faithfully implement this laudable idea as a first step to further action. But of course, language communication is, as common sense dictates, fundamental to interaction and collaboration among the 1.3 billion peoples of Africa burdened with linguistic ‘babel’.

The 1963 recommendation by experts with inputs from UNECA and UNESCO would, if faithfully and patriotically implemented, create, incrementally across the continent, business persons, professionals of all sorts, in sum, a large pool of skilled labor linguistically empowered to flow and function across state borders. Regrettably, as Professor Adamu Abubakar Gwarzo, President and Founder of two Mariam Abacha America University in Niger and Nigeria, notes in his foreword to AfCFTA Business Travelers and French Companion for African Economic Community that ‘the failure of the bilingual project today sticks out like a sore thumb as the requisite cross-border… manpower to drive and network the federating process (lacks) language communication-compliant community of citizens; the business-compliant citizens are not language –compliant’. The sad consequence: Africa and its peoples are not only the losers but remain the least united, the least coordinated, and the least developed part of the world, as facts and figures dishearteningly show. UNCTAD puts intra-African trade at about 21 percent of continental trade in the 2015 and fell to 16 percent in 2020. The total value was only $61 billion. This need not be so.

Backed by the necessary political will, a continental body such as AfCFTA can enable Africa to speak with one united voice on trade negotiations with other big and well organized trading blocs. A report in African Business says that ‘by driving the continent’s integration, the AfCFTA will result in wider and deeper RCVs [regional value chains] thereby laying the foundations for a Made-in-Africa Revolution’. Furthermore, it is calculated that a full implementation of AfCFTA can yield a gain of $450 billion to the continental economy, increase the total volume of exports by 29 percent, increase intra-continental exports trade by 81 percent, lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty, and 68 million out of moderate poverty.

It is a notable omission that, the implementation of the laudable goals of continental and sub-regional structures does not specifically create a mechanism with measurable outcome to encourage bilingualism. Take AfCFTA: through its Council of Ministers Responsible for Trade, several implementation committees, including one on ‘technical barriers to trade’ exist to implement and enforce provisions of the continental agreement. Regrettably, there is no committee assigned directly to identify and remedy linguistic barriers to trade. It is trite to say that inability to communicate constitutes a veritable barrier to any form of integration; it is strange that African leaders and their advisers do not appreciate this fundamental condition to the mobility and interaction of people.

The argument for linguistic harmony and its attendant benefits within and among nations is unassailable. Research supports it. Dr. Arokoyo quotes from Karl W. Deutsch et.al. to advance a number of justifications including that ‘the mobility of persons among the federating units is found to be far more important than the free movement of goods and capital’, that ‘elites must engage in a high and unbroken inter territorial mobility’, and that there must be ‘an availability of efficient and varied means of communication and exchange’.

If Africans ‘speak the same language’, so to say, and understand each other better, it is reasonable to expect agreement on more issues and in turn a quicker realization of their continental objectives. Indeed, observes Dr. Arokoyo so succinctly, ‘the failure of the English–French bilingual scheme [as agreed sixty years ago in Addis Ababa] constitutes today a veritable impediment to Africa’s search for cooperation and economic integration. The bilingual manpower [from African school systems] needed to realise the sound internal and “boot on the ground” inter- territorial marketing is unavailable’. He adds: ‘This ironical crisis of skill and manpower is that African countries like Nigeria might be awash with skilled and competent professionals in politics, diplomacy, economics, international business, etc., but they are ‘landlocked’ [because] cross-border business requires necessarily dealing with the language of the destination markets.

Out of a patriotic, ‘Afrophilic’ concern about the state of his continent generally, and particularly about the perennial inability of African countries to successfully achieve the economic integration sought for more than six decades, Dare has drawn from his area of intellectual and practical strengths as a bilingual (actually he is multilingual for he speaks Yoruba perfectly) to put together these reasonably easy- to – use books. It is his contribution to finding ‘a solution to this language [impediment]’. For the reason that learning French poses ‘dramatic conflicts between the written and spoken forms’ (for example ‘oiseaux’ meaning ‘birds’ is pronounced ‘wazo’ and ‘doigt’ meaning ‘finger’ is pronounced ‘dwa’, the manuals are designed and written to make users ‘hear French with their eyes’.

English-French Companion for ECOWAS and AfCFTA Business Travelers, Dr. Arokoyo’s ‘widow’s mite to Africa’s accelerated cooperation and economic integration…’ is, in the author’s apposite words, ‘an invaluable tool in the hands of those who must engage in unbroken inter-territorial mobility… and those who must receive French-speaking community citizens …under the [ECOWAS] free movement and residence protocol’. As stated above, this manual is written to eliminate the conflict between written and spoken forms of French. By employing ‘phonetic symbols’ taken from alphabets of the languages that learners are already familiar with to pronounce a French word, the learner pronounces exactly the sound of the alphabet that he sees in the word. The learner is to ‘[pronounce] what you see, one symbol one sound’. By this unique method, the French word ‘oiseaux’ is written to be pronounced as ‘wazo’ and ‘doight’ is written to be pronounced ‘dwa’.

Writer on business in Africa William Pollen quotes ‘policy makers [to] say that the free movement of labor will be a key contributor to the successful functioning of AfCFTA…’. If bilingual – even multilingual competence- remains a sine qua non to this end- as indeed it is- English-French Companion for ECOWAS and AfCFTA Business Travelers and French Companion for African Economic Community are in turn, ‘cant-do-without communication tool for any African who wants to ply his trade or skill across borders.

If myopic African governments lack the political will to act in the best interest of their countries by vigorously encouraging bilingualism among their citizens, it behooves serious-minded, broad thinking professionals and business persons to, in self-interest, act differently. And the first step is to attain bilingual, even multilingual competence. This being so, Dr. Arokoyo has done such ‘entrepreneurial spirits’ a huge favour by putting together English-French Companion for ECOWAS and AfCFTA Business Travelers. Besides, it is reasonable to expect that officials in charge of advancing trade and investments and also implementing decisions at national, regional, and continental levels should, as a matter of necessity and good judgment, and in every way possible, encourage a wide use of these manuals. The books certainly can add value to their efforts.

English-French Companion for ECOWAS and AfCFTA Business Travelers and French Companion for African Economic Community, indeed two thoughtfully compiled manuals, are veritable language tools for business on the continent. They are published by and available through LesPolyglottes Ltd. based in Lagos with offices in Abuja and Cotonou.