Once just an obscure island dialect of an African Bantu tongue, Swahili has evolved into Africa’s most internationally recognised language. The African Union did not adopt Swahili as Africa’s international language by happenstance. Nyerere also became the icon of “community brotherhood and sisterhood” under the slogan of the Swahili word ujamaa. On the international scene, no other African language can be heard from world news stations as often or as extensively. And the Swahili population became more entrenched as successive generations of second-language speakers of Swahili lost their ancestral languages and became bona fide Swahili.

Source: Daily Nation January 26, 2023 19:45 UTC