JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) on Tuesday welcomed the declaration by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to adopt Kiswahili as its fourth official language of communication.

PanSALB, an organization established by the parliament to promote multilingualism, said Kiswahili becomes the first indigenous language to be used by the bloc as an official language at inter-state level.

"This milestone achievement towards recognition and elevation of indigenous African languages across the SADC region forms part of the greater effort in ensuring development, usage and intellectualization of our heritage languages," said the chairperson of the board David Maahlamela.

He said Kiswahili is an impeccable point of departure in safeguarding integrative multilingualism inclusive of indigenous languages.

Maahlamela pointed out that Kiswahili is one of the African Union's official languages and the official language of Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda with over 100 million speakers. He believed the language will help unite and integrate the region.

"PanSALB's vision for language planning stems on intellectualization of indigenous languages on four spheres, that is, provincial, national, regional and continental level. Kiswahili is inevitably well-positioned to integrate the SADC region thus we fully support this long overdue resolution," he said.

SADC last week adopted Kiswahili as one of its languages at the the SADC 39th heads of summit in Tanzania. Other SADC official languages are English, Portuguese and French.

Maahlamela bemoaned that Africa is the only continent where the majority of children start school using a foreign language such as Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish which he said are the only means for upward economic mobility in Africa.

"South Africa as a member state has a huge responsibility ahead in ensuring that indigenous language not only becomes communication languages, but also business languages in all sectors and environment," said Maahlamela.

South Africa is also preparing to teach Kiswahili in the schools. Enditem.

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