A new African language is helping to reduce tensions and bring young people together in areas previously torn apart by tribal violence. And academics are so impressed by the language’s potential that a social media platform promoting it will form the subject of a major presentation at this year’s eLearning Africa, the continent’s leading conference on technology-assisted learning, training and development.
The language - ‘Sheng’ – combines Kiswahili, English and a number of Kenyan tribal words, along with a smattering of Arabic, Hindu, French, German, Spanish and Italian. It was born on the streets of Nairobi, in some of the areas hardest hit by eruptions of post-election violence in 2007- 2008.
Now a ‘social enterprise initiative’ in Kenya, ‘Go Sheng’, is helping to celebrate and promote the language, which is almost exclusively used by young people – so much so that it has become the first language of many young Kenyans in urban areas.
The initiative provides a platform for social dialogue for the language’s growing numbers of speakers. In so doing, it is giving a voice to a powerful alternative culture in Kenya and celebrating the many tribal languages that contribute to Sheng. In turn, this helps to bring some welcome cultural harmony and mutual understanding to a country, which has too often been divided against itself in the recent past
