STEM-for-public projects in African tongues are going viral, but researcher finds lapses to cover
More people need to share to reach more audiences; if you come across any of this content, do well to share.
With no background in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the subjects may be perceived as daunting. You walk on the face of the earth but what does it matter the shape of it? Atmospheric science is a thing, but if it’s not your field and you’re not curious, it just doesn’t matter. To make things worse, the terminologies in some of these fields are just incomprehensible to you, except they are explained in your mother tongue.
But once you start seeing videos explaining concepts in astronomy, you might just pick interest. You might even have wondered how social media platforms know the next video you’d like to watch; but you swipe away the thoughts because digging into it can be tasking. You just enjoy the videos; no worries. Again, technology is a thing, but you’re not interested in knowing how it works since you really don’t have to in order to use it.
The language of STEM can be inaccessible, but several projects are now on the digital spaces demystifying these important fields of knowledge, using indigenous African languages.
STEM in your language makes things interesting
On social media these days, teaching and learning are taking place. These digital classrooms are closing the knowledge gap between people who speak languages of the colonial masters and those who speak indigenous African languages. African digital spaces are increasingly booming with contents that demystify science, technology, engineering and mathematics knowledge.
Notwithstanding that research has stressed the importance of mother tongue education, there is still setback to significantly achieve indigenisation of modern STEM in Africa, though there has been relative input in the formal education system in some countries.
But the question, then, remains: how about the general public who can’t possibly do without inventions of STEM, yet lack knowledge in it?
The proliferation of contents focused on STEM using various African languages has make the subject reach more people. While this is significant to African linguistics, the general public, it is most impactful to uneducated people who don’t speak foreign languages like English or French, with which STEM are commonly taught in formal settings.
One after the other
Linguist and researcher, Taofeek Adebayo traced the earliest STEM content created in African languages to 2016. Science in Hausa and Fabu Onimojinle Yoruba Science Fiction led the way through posting of contents on Facebook. While the former discusses technology, space science and palaeontology; the latter, through science-fiction stories, explores topics including technology, space science, chemistry and logic. The Association of Educators of Science and Technology in Yoruba language came on the scene in 2017.
The Assistant Professor of Linguistics at California State University discovered several of these projects (at least 13) in three-year long digital ethnography research while also creating contents in Yoruba language on space science, technology, oceanology, atmospheric science, physics, chemistry, health science... on Science in Yoruba, starting from 2020, the same period projects like Mathematics in Yoruba Language, Wolof Tech, Cell Biology na Gikuyu (Gikuyu and Swahili) emerged online. A year later, Maths in Yoruba with Lukgaf came, followed by Arojinle (chemistry, health science, zoology, entomology, meteorology) and Wuraola Oyewusi (data science) and then Psychology ni Ede Yoruba, Mmuta Di Uto (mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, physics) and Igbo Agaghi Ala (mathematics) – the last two in Igbo language – emerged in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
As you can also see, some of these projects are discipline-specific while others are general-focus (as far as audience are interested). The researcher also observed that the mode of operations of the content creators can be individual, association and collaborative. They deliver contents in written-pictorial, audio, and audiovisual formats using either monolingual, bilingual, or translanguaging approach.
One myth shattered; many impacts achieved
In case you’re not aware, for many years, mother tongue education has been advocated for. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has championed multilingual education for several years. Educators as well as linguists have also contributed to the issue of mother language-based instruction in early education. But with between 1,500 to 3,000 languages in Africa alone, coupled with the fact that many countries on the continent are multilingual, with some having about 500 languages (e.g. Nigeria), implementing policy that promotes this linguistic and developmental matter has been difficult.
Aside from this, some individuals espouse the myth that African languages can’t sufficiently explain modern STEM. Through watching online contents, this mindset may be changing. “It seems that STEM-for-the-public projects may be able to combat the erroneous belief that African languages are incapable of expressing modern STEM”, the researcher stated.
He further noted that these projects have also enabled millions of social media users to have access to STEM knowledge, enhance their sense of identity, informally complement classroom instruction, facilitate discussion about the indigenisation of STEM, inspire dialogue between modern STEM and indigenous knowledge system.
More jobs to be done
While the STEM-for-the-public projects have achieved measurable impacts, the digital creator and teacher noted that the goal is yet to be fully realised. Mixing local and foreign languages or translanguaging is one of the existing shortfalls of these projects. More importantly, they exclude offline publics (the author noted that only one project has made it to local library and local TV station). Also, compared to the number of internet users, which ranges to millions, only a few people have benefited and engaged with these projects. That means, more people need to share to reach more audiences; if you come across any of this content, do well to share.
Credits:
Quadri Yahya/Writer
Hassana Samuel/Contributor
Amina Abdulganiyu/Contributor