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People & Culture
Tanzania set to export Kiswahili language experts to EAC states
Posted: Monday July 13, 2009 3:26 AM BT
Tanzania has initiated strategies to 'export' human resources to East African Community (EAC) member states in need of Kiswahili experts. Already 170 Kiswahili experts countrywide have been registered by the Ministry of Information, Culture and Sports with a view to marketing them in the region.
Senior cultural officer in the ministry Bonifasi Sanjulu said in an interview recently that the names of the Kiswahili experts would be marketed in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Youth Development. "Experts are those with a master's degree or a doctorate in their relevant fields of studies in Kiswahili who have been teaching various courses in different local institutions," he said.
Tanzania's, efforts to start marketing its Kiswahili experts have gone in high gear following increased demand for the experts as some EAC members intensified the use of the language and made it a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools. Sanjulu said Rwanda and Burundi were among countries that had started using Kiswahili in their higher learning institutions and primary schools. However, to be more internationally competitive, he urged Tanzanian universities to introduce interpreter courses which in recent years had become an essential competence for such experts in foreign markets. "If you visit some of the American institutions you will find many Kenyans working as interpreters, mostly because they studied the interpreter course at the university, which our experts here lack," Sanjulu said. The Tanzanian private sector has been vocal in calling for the country to have an elaborate strategy to use her comparative advantage in Kiswahili to clinch various regional posts as well as teaching positions in regional universities. As the use of Kiswahili spreads in the African continent, Tanzanians stand a better chance to capitalize on their comparative advantage of their command of the language. Tanzania's labour force stood at 13.4 million in 1999, and although the level of unemployment was not well defined, the 1991 statistics by the Tanzanian Bureau of Statistics put the unemployment rate in rural and urban areas at 2.2 per cent and 10.6 per cent, respectively. The higher unemployment rate in urban areas is being attributed to both a lack of economic prospects and a much higher rate of population growth, with the latter factor stemming chiefly from a high rate of rural-to-urban migration caused by the migrant perception that urban employment was well-paying. |
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