English and French

President Sarkosy spent three hours in Rwanda on Thursday.

Ever since France's original inaction and later intervention at the time of the genocide, relations between the countries have been bad. The abandoned French Cultural Centre is a symbolic eyesore on one of the main roads into Kigali.

Last year schools were instructed to change European language teaching from French to English, with little notice or preparation. Rwandan teachers of French in private schools (including the 4 Friends' schools) lost their jobs as did some other professionals unable to pass an English test; English speaking Ugandans were sometimes brought in to replace them. This year schools started back a month late, so all teachers could receive a month's intensive English language training.

With a few exceptions teachers, like other Rwandans educated here, struggle with spoken English, even if they can read and write enough to understand an instruction manual or use the internet, for example. In my limited experience, French is the language most commonly used in informal mixed groups of Rwandans and bazungu (whites) to avoid the necessity for translation.

It is probably well recognised by the general public that the change was hasty, even if it makes good economic sense for Rwanda to use the same language as the bigger players in the East African Economic Union – anglophone Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. It is also the case that most government ministers and top civil servants learnt English before French.

Many schools have gone beyond the advice to start English in year 4 and are labouring to use English as the language of instruction from the moment children are in Primary 1, though many primary teachers themselves have little fluency or aural comprehension, as I have witnessed. (Kinyarwanda, the mother tongue for all groups of Rwandans, is, at least, still part of the curriculum for primary and secondary.)

Now President Sarkosy has been welcomed – there were even a few French flags in evidence. On Friday morning's English language news programme on Rwandan radio, President Kagame's speech for the occasion was reported in detail and long excerpts played. While Sarkosy stopped short of a full apology, he acknowledged that grave mistakes had been made in the past. He invited Kagame to a France-Africa meeting in Nice next year and Kagame said he would not only attend but also take a full part.

Then he addressed the question of English or French. Apparently there have been rumours flying for a couple of weeks that the decision to change to English was to be reversed. That didn't happen. The president did say, however, that both French and English would continue to be taught and used, to help Rwandans play their full part in the international economy and world affairs. Perhaps they should be learning Chinese as well, he ventured.

What are the schools meant to do now?