Somali Literacy Campaign
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Somali Literacy Campaign or Af Somali "Ol Olaha Horumarinta Akhris iyo Qorista" was a nationally enforced national literacy campaign which took place in Somalia from 1974-1975. The literacy campaign was undertaken to improve the socioeconomic and development of the country.[1] The part of the literacy campaign which catapulted the project was when the literacy campaign was taken into rural side of the country and every community received volunteer teachers making the campaign a widespread one in Somalia. The undertaking has been described as "too ambitious"[2] as the some of the teachers were children. But hardly no one considers young adults children in Somalia.
Phases of the Literacy Campaign[edit]
The initial phase of the Somali Rural Literacy Campaign followed after the government of Somalia commissioned Af Somali experts to device a new alphabet for the Somali language and soon after "official introduction of the Af-Soomaali script" was achieved. The military government, which came to power in October 1969 under the aegis of General Mohamed Siad Barre, called upon all the Somali language experts and asked them to come up with researched material and books for all possible subjects from culture, history, science and engineering. Within a year, the new administration enforced a refined script by the linguist Shire Jama Ahmed.
From 1961 to 1968, several versions of supposed "Somali script" were circulated by different inventors but a refined Latin script was chosen as the official writing method for transcribing the Somali language. By late 1972, Barre's government began printing more books in Af Soomaali using the new script. Text books intended for primary and high schools, public offices, guide books for production houses and military drill books were all published.
Rebirth of Somali Literature[edit]
Somalia as a nation is known as the "nation of poets" where successive generations of poets both men and women passed poems down to the memory prowess of the next generations. With the opportunity to now conserve 17th and 18th century classic Somali literature for future generations, everyone went to work to collect, publish and conserve volumes of Somali poetry, stories, and landmark events.
National Printing Agency, National Library, National Museum and other public institutions were created to play the critical role of collecting, researching and conserving Somali culture, history, literature, music and artifacts. Somali National Academy of Culture as well as Somali National University become the leading institutions of research in Somalia.
Civil Servants Learn Af Somali from New Somali Alphabet[edit]
Starting in major cities and towns, all Somali civil servants were instructed to quickly learn the writing methods of the Somali language within six months.[3] The grace period of six months from January to June 1972 was given otherwise non-literate government workers would lose their jobs. It was further decided that all official documents in government offices would feature Shire's Latin script.
New Af Somali Alphabet Came Af Somali Literacy Campaign[edit]
A campaign named after Somali Rural Literacy Campaign was initiated after the Somali national script was introduced, the government undertook a massive literacy campaign in villages and rural settlements across the country from 1974 to 1975. This effort was termed in the Somali language Ol Olaha Waxbarashada Reer Miyiga or Somali Countryside Literacy Campaign. The national campaign was carried out by young people, mostly elementary school teachers as well as high school students and those educated government workers and military personal. In order to have maximum volunteers from, school has been suspended for those in secondary school so they could be sent to the rural and nomadic settlements.[4] This was a relatively easy undertaking as there was now an alphabet to teach and learn. The campaign was nicknamed "Teach or Learn" or Af Somali: Bar ama barro. Meaning, teach if you know or learn if don't know.
Many consider the initial introduction of Shire's Somali orthography and the subsequent literacy campaign to be one of the most significant achievements in Somalia's post-colonial administration. From 1961, and two commissioned established to study the feasibility of devising a national orthography, a debate kept ongoing as to what script to use; Arabic or Latin. Arabic was relatively easy for Somalia children as it was the medium script for Koranic studies and almost every child in villages and towns knew how to write Arabic script.
Debate on What Scrip to Use for Af Somali: Arabic or Latin?[edit]
The government settled on Latin for many reasons including available machinery and tools versus the economic cost of introducing new equipment to transcribe new Af Somali script. Because of this vital decision, decades later, Somali immigrants around the globe are having better luck in learning new languages compared to people coming from countries which use non-Latin writing scripts. While the decision has been finally reached in 1972, the history of the script question was ongoing even before 1960.[5]
Elsewhere in Africa, people took note of Somalia's progress in educating the masses in terms of literacy. Julius Nyerere, then Tanzania's president, asserted that "the Somalis are practicing what we in Tanzania preach."
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ "Main copy". Retrieved 23 June 2019.
- ↑ Somalia's Rural Literacy Campaign. Witness History. BBC. 12 January 2015.
- ↑ "National Mass Literacy Campaign". Retrieved 23 June 2019.
- ↑ Thomas A. Johnson (June 23, 1974). "Somali Schools to Close a Year So Students Can Teach Nomads". The New York Times. p. 1.
- ↑ http://www.jstor.org/stable/43661187 as detailed in The Literacy Campaigns of Ethiopia and Somalia
External links and further reading[edit]
- "Reference to 'the late Shire Jama Ahmed'". Archived from the original on 11 February 2011. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
- Hoben, Susan J. (1988). "LITERACY CAMPAIGNS IN ETHIOPIA AND SOMALIA: A COMPARISON". Northeast African Studies. Michigan State University Press. 10 (2/3): 111–25.
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