Browsing Faculty of Education by Subject "Malawi"
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Kamwendo, G. (Taylor & Francis, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals, December NaN, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: Malawi's Vision 2020 document, a national document that serves as a vehicle to project a future for a more developed, secure and democratically mature nation, laments the tendency of Malawians to denigrade local products and glorify all things foreign. Yet, paradoxically, the document does not address the important issue of promoting Malawi's indegenous languages. This silence can be interpreted as reflective of the population's inclination to ascribe greater value to forign culture. In Malawi, as in many other African countries, indigenous languages are not considered worthy as media of education, subjects of advanced study or critical vehicles for national development. They are still victim to a discrimination rooted in Africa's 500 plus years of European enslavement and colonialisation. Against the backdrop of the pursuit of an African Renaissance, this article looks at Malawi's language policies since independence in 1964, and at how, ten years short of an idyllic national vision, Malawi measures up on the important issue of language. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/1041 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_IJARS_2010.pdf (1.393Mb) -
Kamwendo, G.H. (Brill Academic Publishers. http://www.brill.nl/m%5Fcatalogue.asp?sub=3, NaN, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: In a linguistically heterogeneous country, one of the critical challenges is to make information accessible to all people. Various communication media can be used: television, radio, telephone, the Internet and others. Malawi needs to embrace Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in order to achieve development in all spheres of human life. Malawi’s use of ICTs ranks low. Th e critical challenge, therefore, is to promote an increased use of ICTs with the aim of improving people’s access to information. Given that only a minority of Malawians have access to ICTs, that television has not signifi cantly penetrated into rural areas where 80 % of the population lives, and that there is also a high illiteracy rate, the radio becomes the most accessible form of technology for information dissemination in Malawi. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/530 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_PGDT_2008.pdf (590.8Kb) -
Kamwendo, G.H.; Mooko, T. (Walter de Gruyter, http://www.degruyter.de, November NaN, 2006)[more][less]
Abstract: The article discusses language planning in two Southern African countries, Botswana and Malawi. Both countries are multilingual and multicultural. They also share a common British colonial history. At independence, the two countries retained English as the official language. In Botswana, Setswana was made the national language while in Malawi, it was Chichewa. Over the years, these languages have been developed and promoted at the expense of other indigenous languages, a situation that has prompted linguistic minorities to engage in the language-based politics of recognition. The article discusses how Botswana and Malawi are responding to the call for the official recognition of more indigenous languages in domains such as government, education, and mass media. Relevant comparisons and contrasts between Botswana and Malawi are drawn in this regard in the article. One clear common denominator is the dominance of English in official domains in the two countries. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/829 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_IJSL_2006.pdf (1.340Mb) -
Kamwendo, G.H. (Routledge. http://www.informaworld.com, August NaN, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: According to the Medical Council of Malawi, one of the conditions for a licence to be granted to an individual who wants to practise medicine in Malawi is the practitioner's ability to speak and write English fluently. This means that the expatriate medical practitioner is not required by law to demonstrate fluency in Chichewa (the national language) or any other relevant indigenous language(s). On the basis of a sociolinguistic study that was conducted at a major referral hospital in a predominantly Chitumbuka-speaking town, this paper argues that the Medical Council of Malawi erroneously assumes that English is the main language of doctor-patient communication in Malawian hospitals since the country is linguistically categorised as an English speaking African country. Yet only a minority of the population is competent in English. The national language (Chichewa), and other indigenous languages remain the main medium through which much of the health service provider-patient communication takes place. A more realistic and comprehensive language proficiency testing should cover English (the main international language of medicine) and at least one indigenous language (the lingua franca of the area in which a particular hospital is located). URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/540 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_CILP_2008.pdf (633.9Kb) -
Kamwendo, G. H. (Southern African Comparative and History of Education Society (SACHES). http://www.journals.co.za/ej/ejour_sare.html, October NaN, 2006)[more][less]
Abstract: During the first 30 years of Malawi’s independence (1964-1994), the country was under President Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s one-party authoritarian rule. In line with Banda’s nation-building ideology, Malawi pursued the policy of one nation, one party (the Malawi Congress Party), one leader (Life President Banda) and one national language (Chichewa). Despite the fact that Malawi is multilingual and multiethnic, the Banda regime created a political atmosphere under which non-Chewa ethnic and/or linguistic identities were suppressed. A political system was established that muzzled academic and other freedoms. Academia, for instance, was deprived of its critical and objective voice. The then only university, the University of Malawi, was carefully monitored to ensure that so-called subversive disciplines or topics were not on offer. Sociolinguistic research was one of the academic disciplines that did not enjoy meaningful academic freedom. The demise of the Banda regime in 1994 and the adoption of a new constitution that embraces various freedoms (including academic freedom) have meant that there are no longer political constraints on academic freedom. However, new forms of constraint on academic freedom have arisen. These are economic constraints, many emanating from the research-funding agencies’ agendas. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10311/1106 Files in this item: 1
Kamwendo_SAREEP_2006.pdf (99.15Kb)
Now showing items 1-5 of 5