As East Africa stitches itself into denser webs of trade and politics, one of the region’s oldest instruments of exchange — Kiswahili — is enjoying an unusual renaissance. Once the lingua franca of dhow-borne merchants on the Indian Ocean coast, Swahili is now being repurposed as a language of commerce, diplomacy and regional identity, promoted by presidents, taught in universities from London to Boston and recognised by continental institutions.
The East African Community (EAC) and the African Union (AU) have both signalled that Kiswahili is more than cultural heritage. The AU adopted Swahili as a working language in 2022 and UNESCO and the UN now mark World Kiswahili Language Day each July — symbolic moves that reflect deliberate policy choices about unity and soft power. Within the EAC, Kiswahili’s spread — from Tanzania and Kenya into Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and now Somalia as an EAC partner — creates a practical lingua franca across borders where dozens of languages meet.
Sevo
Political imprimatur has mattered. Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan has repeatedly framed Kiswahili as “the only African language with the power to unite the continent”, urging investment in its teaching and cultural reach.
Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni has similarly urged citizens to learn and use Kiswahili as a tool for trade and regional cohesion: “The language is used to facilitate trade and commerce in the region,” he told a public forum, underlining the economic logic of a shared tongue.
Even beyond the region, universities and research centres have taken note. Institutions such as SOAS in London, Yale and Harvard in the United States, and newer initiatives at MIT now offer structured Swahili teaching and research programmes, reflecting demand from diplomats, businesses and scholars keen to engage Africa on its own linguistic terms. For students and employers alike, fluency in Kiswahili is becoming a pragmatic asset rather than merely an academic pursuit.
The language’s modern institutional story is shadowed by colonial history.
German rule in what was then German East Africa altered administrative scripts and schooling, accelerating the transition from Arabic Ajami scripts to Latin orthography — a change that later British administrations consolidated with regional standardisation in the 1920s. Contemporary German–Tanzanian relations, now focused on development rather than empire, nevertheless reflect a long history of linguistic contact and exchange.
On the ground, the logic is unmistakable. A recent feature on regional media quoted a listener at a Kiswahili celebration: “This will enable people to understand since Kiswahili is spoken by over 200 million people worldwide, so we must take pride in it,” a reflection of public pride and pragmatic calculation that literacy in Swahili opens markets and jobs. Scholars too see momentum: Prof Kimani Njogu, a long-time advocate for the language, argues that formal institutions — councils, curricula and incentives — are the next step if Kiswahili is to move from symbolic recognition to everyday governance and commerce.
Somali president
Not every advance is uncontested. Language policy collides with identity politics, colonial legacies and practical hurdles: training teachers, producing technical vocabulary, and resourcing translation in law and finance. Debates over whether Swahili should supplant colonial tongues or sit alongside them are not merely academic; they reverberate in classrooms, parliaments and trade halls.
A recent, widely circulated social-media report suggested that Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud instructed universities to promote Swahili as a primary language for EAC engagement — a sign, whether tentative or symbolic, of how political gestures can accelerate linguistic change. That particular directive has chiefly circulated on social platforms and local commentaries; policymakers and scholars in Mogadishu continue to weigh the details.
If trade, diplomacy and institutions continue to converge around a common tongue, Kiswahili’s appeal is plain: it is at once local and transnational, rooted in coastal commerce yet flexible enough for modern administration. The task ahead is technical and political — to build vocabularies of law, science and finance; to train teachers; and to ensure that promotion of Kiswahili is inclusive rather than prescriptive. For East Africa’s merchants, students and statesmen, however, the language already offers a rare shared tool — and a rare claim to cultural leadership on the continent.
