Africa’s mother tongues are finding new life as youth connect with roots and relatives

By  Farai Mutsaka and DAN IKPOYI, Associated Press

Growing interest in African languages is creating new business opportunities as people in the diaspora seek to connect with their relatives and roots.

HARARE, Zimbabwe(AP) — A television game show in Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos has an unforgiving rule: Speak English and you lose. For a U.S.-born millennial in the audience and a student of her parents’ mother tongue, the high-stakes setting is a perfect classroom.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old Canadian speaks to a teacher about 13,000 kilometers (8,000 miles) away in Zimbabwe, learning a language her parents feared she would never speak.

“Mhoroi,” Nyashadzashe Machingura says cheerfully with a pronounced Canadian accent while greeting in Zimbabwe’s vernacular Shona.

The scenes capture a new generation of interest and entrepreneurship around African languages once pushed to the margins by decades of colonialism. Often seen as secondary to English, French and Portuguese, they are enjoying a renaissance that is also creating business opportunities.

Read more about this special form of connection.

Many Black Americans cannot connect to their ancestry because of being kidnapped and forced to endure the Middle Passage.

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