ALGIERS, Algeria — More than a year after Algeria launched a pilot program to teach English in elementary schools, the country is hailing it as a success and expanding it in a move that reflects a widening linguistic shift underway in former French colonies throughout Africa.
Students returning to third and fourth grade classrooms this fall will participate in two 45-minute English classes each week as the country creates new teacher training programs at universities and eyes more transformational changes in the years ahead.
“Teaching English is a strategic choice in the country’s new education policy,” Education Minister Abdelkrim Belabed said last week, lauding the move as an immense success.
English is the world’s most widely spoken language, accounts for the majority of content on the internet and remains a common language in business and science. And as France’s economic and political influence wanes throughout Africa, Algeria is among a longer list of countries gradually transitioning toward English as their main foreign language.
Algeria has more French speakers than all but two nations — France itself and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nearly 15 million out of the country’s 44 million people speak it, according to the International Organization of the French Language. Its officials frame English classes as a practical rather than political shift, noting the language’s importance in scientific and technical fields.
The expansion of English language learning comes as tensions increasingly flare between France and Algeria.
The two share security interests over the political upheavals shaping contemporary West Africa. However, in recent years they have sparred repeatedly over immigration, extradition and how each country memorializes colonialism and the brutal war that resulted in Algeria’s independence in 1962. (AP)